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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29501355">The Eve of the War</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuokkaMocha/pseuds/QuokkaMocha'>QuokkaMocha</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who, Doctor Who &amp; Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), In the Loop (2009) &amp; The Thick of It, The Thick of It (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>9/11 References, Action, Action/Adventure, Blood and Injury, Crossover, Crossovers &amp; Fandom Fusions, Dark Comedy, Episode: s01e04 Aliens of London, Episode: s01e05 World War Three, Gen, Injury, Malcolm Tucker Uses Bad Language, Swearing, dark humour</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 01:33:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,499</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29501355</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuokkaMocha/pseuds/QuokkaMocha</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Malcolm Tucker and Nicola Murray are caught in Downing Street during possibly the oddest crisis of their careers - an alien spacecraft crashing into the Thames and some very odd behaviour from fellow MPs.</p>
<p>Crossover between The Thick of It (start of Season 3) and Doctor Who (during the episodes Aliens of London and World War Three (season 1)).</p>
<p>Warnings for very, VERY, bad language from the outset.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Part 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>London, 6<sup>th</sup> March 2006, 11:23am</p>
<p> </p>
<p>‘Is this real? Has anyone actually looked out the window and seen if this is real? I mean, it could be another War of the Worlds. People thought that was real.’</p>
<p>Ollie ignored his colleagues behind him, especially Terri, who’d asked if what was happening was real every five seconds or so since the crash, and struggled to press himself closer to the plate glass window to get a better angle, though the rest of Whitehall hid the end of the street where it met Parliament Square from view.</p>
<p>‘I mean,’ Terri continued, ‘if it isn’t real, it’s pretty irresponsible. People could panic. People could die because of this. I’ll bet it’s Channel Four. It’s going to be Charlie Brooker.’</p>
<p>‘There’s smoke coming from Parliament,’ Ollie called over his shoulder. ‘Can’t see any more without going on the roof.’</p>
<p>‘Can you get on the roof?’ asked Glenn Cullen, who was hunched at his desk with BBC News 24 on mute. The same pictures played over and over, jerky, badly focused images of St Stephen’s Tower and the Westminster Clock, half smashed and still smoking where it had recently been grazed by, if the journos were to be believed, an alien spacecraft that had hurtled on and landed in the Thames.</p>
<p>‘I think they keep the door locked now,’ said Terri, ‘after that ‘Black Friday’ last year.’</p>
<p>‘I thought that happened on a Thursday,’ said Glenn.</p>
<p>‘Maybe it did. Maybe they just couldn’t alliterate anything with Thursday,’ Ollie suggested, coming away from the window.</p>
<p>‘Throw yourself off a roof Thursday, what’s wrong with that?’</p>
<p>‘That doesn’t look real,’ Terri concluded, shaking her head at the screen. ‘That’s like something out of Thunderbirds. Bet if you ran it again in HD, you’d see the strings.’</p>
<p>Glenn fumbled with the remote and started flicking channels, which earned a few groans from some of the other civil servants who’d been standing around the monitor, watching.</p>
<p>‘It’s on CNN, AMNN, France 24… Not ITV though. They’re still on This Morning.’</p>
<p>‘Oh, brilliant,’ said Ollie. ‘I was really holding out to hear Eamonn Holmes’s take on the whole thing.’</p>
<p>‘I haven’t watched it since Richard and Judy left,’ said Terri. ‘Not unless one of the ministers has been on, and even then, you do something else at the same time.’</p>
<p>Under pressure from the audience, Glenn switched the TV back to the BBC, who’d moved onto a live with a sweating, slightly terrified-looking reporter.</p>
<p>‘The army are sending divers into the wreck of the spaceship,’ said the reporter, whose name, Ollie thought, was Tom something. ‘No one knows what they’re going to find.’</p>
<p>‘There’s insightful coverage for you,’ said Glenn with a sneer. ‘No one knows what they’re going to find. Of course no one knows what they’re going to fucking find. It’s a fucking spaceship.’</p>
<p>‘Seems a bit stupid to go down and poke about at it,’ said Terri. ‘What if it’s got diseases or something?’</p>
<p>‘I thought you said it wasn’t real?’</p>
<p>‘Well, don’t you think it’s weird they can’t find the PM? Usually he’d be the first one sticking his face in front of a camera. They don’t have him for a soundbite because this isn’t real. It’s a hoax.’ Terri nodded, happy with her own logic.</p>
<p>‘Maybe he’s keeping shtum because Malcolm’s told him to,’ Glenn suggested.</p>
<p>‘No, Malcolm doesn’t know where he is either,’ Ollie said. ‘Heard him on the phone just before he went over to Number Ten.’</p>
<p>‘God, I hope it is a hoax,’ said Glenn. ‘Imagine our first contact with aliens being Malcolm?’</p>
<p>‘Well, you’d be pretty sure they’d never invade us. Probably run back to Mars in tears,’ said Terri.</p>
<p>‘Mars isn’t capable of supporting life,’ Glenn told her.</p>
<p>‘Like Glenn’s ambitions,’ Ollie put in, gave his colleague a grin and enjoyed the glower he got in return. Sometimes there was no sport in annoying Glenn. It was too easy.</p>
<p>‘I hope Nicola’s all right,’ Terri said.</p>
<p>‘Speaking of incapable things,’ Ollie muttered.</p>
<p>‘Why?’ Glenn asked. ‘Where is she, anyway? Thought her chiropodist’s thing wasn’t until Monday?’</p>
<p>‘She’s over at Number Ten as well,’ Terri said. ‘Post-mortem on the immigration database fiasco. Malcolm was here trying to catch her before she left. Wasn’t too happy he’d missed her.’</p>
<p>‘What’ll we do with that then?’ Glenn asked. ‘What do you file aliens under? Migrant workers?’</p>
<p>‘Maybe we could persuade whatever planet they’re from to join the EU and make it easier,’ Ollie suggested.</p>
<p>‘People in this country can’t cope with someone moving next door with a slightly foreign accent. How the fuck are they going to deal with three-headed, fifteen-breasted warriors from another planet?’</p>
<p>‘Fifteen-breasted? Is that why you’re so desperate to go and look at this thing? Everyone on Earth turned you down, so you’re starting on alien women?’</p>
<p>‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ollie.’</p>
<p>‘Did you set this up, Glenn? Have you got some kind of intergalactic Plentyoffish.com? Elderly human – roughly speaking – seeks basically anything out there that’s not too picky?’</p>
<p>‘Everyone else is going up to the roof,’ said Terri, cutting off whatever retort Glenn was about to hurl. ‘I’m going up too.’</p>
<p>‘Yeah, let’s go and wave to Glenn’s girlfriend,’ said Ollie, heading after her. ‘Before she sees him, discovers she’s made a wasted trip, and decides to fucking eat us all.’</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>2.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The spaceship had ripped through the clocktower and plunged into the Thames at approximately five to eleven that morning. Big Ben gave a couple of mournful, discordant tolls before falling silent, but at least the bell hadn’t actually broken its mounts and fallen. That was something. Currently, the whole City of Westminster was crawling with police and army, either keeping the public at a safe distance, dealing with the recovery along the Victoria Embankment, or swarming around Whitehall and Parliament Square trying to sort out the political wheat from the chaff, the important people from those who could be safely shunted off to the comfy London flats they claimed not to own.</p>
<p>As Malcolm Tucker made his way past the Cenotaph, several large Met vans and army trucks were parked outside the various ministries, evacuating those inside. Standard protocol in these days of the War Against Terror. They’d learned from 9/11 that if one aircraft, or in this case spacecraft, could impact on a landmark site, there could be several more. Best to be on the safe side and get the country’s rulers out of the buildings with the most likely big, red Xs on them. From what he glimpsed as he strode past, it was as big a shambles as anyone with a vague knowledge of the workings of British government would suspect.</p>
<p>He tried the PM’s mobile number again without slowing down, but did glance over his shoulder for a second at the mess that was the Palace of Westminster. Augustus Pugin’s Arts and Crafts masterpiece was not exactly looking its best. Smoke still curled from the clocktower, forming an angry looking cloud directly overhead. Half of Parliament Square was completely cut off due to debris, and the risk of more bits of intricately carved rock, wrought iron and glass falling from the crumbling edges of the clock. Blue and white police tape fluttered in the chilly wind, guarded by bored-looking coppers in reflective jackets, who stood there nice and quiet while their colleagues further along the various roads feeding into the square and the Embankment kept the sightseers at bay. They’d quickly cleared the traffic that had been on Whitehall and now, save the police and army vehicles, the street was empty all the way up to Trafalgar Square. There were people everywhere though. Civil servants, MPs, opposition Party members, civilians, tourists, all those caught in the middle of the chaos, formed a mass of bodies along the street, with the occasional soldier or cop to herd them along. Malcolm cut through them like a sprite in a video game, avoiding asteroids. It was an automatic skill anyone who’d lived in London for a while picked up, but it was especially useful there.</p>
<p>The PM’s phone went to voicemail.</p>
<p>‘Where the fuck are you?’ Malcolm asked, shouldering a bewildered looking man in a ‘My sister went to London and all I got was this lousy T-shirt’ shirt out of his way. ‘It might’ve skipped your notice but a fucking great spaceship just crashed into the fucking river. The whole of London’s going arse over tit in a panic about it. Every fucking journalist from here to Whateverthefuckistan is here talking about it. Every two-bit celebrity who ever existed is suddenly a fucking NASA expert and is spouting their opinion to any fucking channel that’ll stick a camera in their face, and the one person who is really fucking conspicuous by his absence is the fucking Prime Minister. Meanwhile I have every twat with a phone ringing me asking where you are and I have to tell them I don’t fucking know, which makes me look like an idiot. So wherever the fuck you are, whosever’s desk you’re hiding under, just so’s you know, I’m heading into Downing Street at this very minute, so you’d better get a good excuse together pronto, because I am coming for you.’</p>
<p>There was a crowd of cameras and journalists gathered outside Number Ten, fucking Andrew Marr amongst them, but Malcolm ignored him. He heard Marr calling out his name before turning back to witter to camera, and a barrage of flashes fired at him, leaving glowing blobs floating across his field of vision as he approached the door. Malcolm was used to the air of urgency and panic about Number Ten but today felt different. This was a proper panic. This was find-yourself-a-wee-cupboard-to-sit-in-and-have-a-cry panic. He saw it in the faces of the aides and advisors he passed as he made his way through the lobbies and corridors, aiming for his office but keeping an eye and ear out all the way in case anything useful drifted towards him. There were soldiers and police swarming around inside too, hefty blokes in black riot gear looking like something out of one of those ultra-violent videogames middle class parents were always trying to have banned. There were even a couple of blokes from the Parachute Regiment about, though fuck knew why.</p>
<p>Malcolm had to show his ID three more times before he even reached the main staircase, as well as fending off the volley of questions that flew at him as soon as people spotted him. He tried to find Sam Cassidy, his PA, but couldn’t see her. Then, halfway along the corridor outside his office, a skinny Asian man with a staff lanyard and a pained expression intercepted him. That look of exhausted concern and frustration told Malcolm this guy was actually dealing with things, rather than just bumbling about waiting to be told which cupboard he could sit and cry in, so Malcolm allowed himself to be accosted for once.</p>
<p>‘Malcolm, you’re here.’</p>
<p>What the fuck was the man’s name? Malcolm surreptitiously glanced at the ID badge around the man’s neck. Indra Ganesh. MOD. Vaguely familiar-looking but Malcolm didn’t think he’d ever spoken to this one before. Either that meant he was all right at his job and hadn’t earned a bollocking or he was good at keeping out of the spotlight.</p>
<p>‘Any sign of him yet?’ Malcolm asked.</p>
<p>Ganesh shook his head. ‘There’s a woman from MI5 here though. She said something about him driving away.’</p>
<p>‘Driving away where? He’s the fucking Prime Minister. What, is he away to some bunker he hasn’t told us about with thirty years’ worth of fucking Bollinger and Waitrose ready meals…’</p>
<p>‘I don’t know. I’ve never met her before. She just turned up, said he’d been driven away.’</p>
<p>‘By who? No, let me guess, you don’t know. Well, what do you know?’</p>
<p>Ganesh sighed and steadied himself. ‘This morning, an unprecedented security event occurred in Central London and the police and armed forces are currently working to establish a perimeter, determine the cause and secure the area.’</p>
<p>‘Determine… the cause was a fucking big alien thing falling out the sky. I know what the fucking cause was. What I want to know is, where’s the Cabinet? Where’s all the bastards we pay through the fucking nose in taxes for so when something like this comes up, they can go on the BBC and tell us it’s all sorted even though it’s really a fucking catastrophe? What’s COBRA doing or are they not out their beds yet?’</p>
<p>‘We’ve been calling the Cabinet Office for the last hour,’ said Ganesh. ‘The staff there have the briefing rooms set up and ready but no one can contact any of the Cabinet members.’</p>
<p>‘Any of them?’</p>
<p>For the first time since getting the phonecall alerting him to this new crisis, Malcolm felt the growl of concern start up. Not that he wasn’t worried about the rest of it. Aliens. Fuck’s sake. But that was something he could deal with later on, when he’d got through the day and made sure everyone was doing their job. But no PM, no Cabinet…</p>
<p>‘You’ve tried all of them at home? Second homes? Mobiles? Love nests in the fucking Algarve?’</p>
<p>‘Everything,’ said Ganesh. ‘It’s like they’ve all just vanished.’</p>
<p>‘What about your woman from MI5, what’s she got to say about it?’</p>
<p>‘Well, I only spoke to her about the Prime Minister…’</p>
<p>Malcolm was already walking away. ‘Where is she?’</p>
<p>‘Cabinet room, last I saw her. But…’</p>
<p>Malcolm left him and headed back the way he’d come, though he could feel Ganesh following in his wake even before the other man spoke again.</p>
<p>‘The thing is,’ he said. ‘This woman, Margaret Blaine…’</p>
<p>‘Never heard of her.’</p>
<p>‘She said the Prime Minister’s car’s disappeared.’</p>
<p>‘The fuck it has. Chances are he’s pissed off to somewhere nice and warm where he can wait ‘til the big boys sort everything out, and he’s got another think coming. I’ll get him back here if I have to throw the useless piece of human fucking flotsam over my shoulder and carry him like the overgrown fucking baby he is.’</p>
<p>They reached the doors to the Cabinet room and Malcolm strode in without knocking or hesitating, interrupting two men and a woman in conversation on the other side of the long table.</p>
<p>‘What is…’ began the woman.</p>
<p>‘Margaret Blaine, I take it. Malcolm Tucker, Director of Communications. Anyone want to tell me where the fuck the Prime Minister is and why I wasn’t told he was going anywhere?’</p>
<p>Blaine, a stout woman with blonde hair cut short, glowered at him and glanced at her companion, an equally large man with a pasty, heart-attack-on-the-way complexion and dark, curly hair. Malcolm had never seen her before, but the man he recognised. Joseph Green, MP for some nowhere constituency with more cows than voters.</p>
<p>‘The fuck you doing here?’ Malcolm demanded.</p>
<p>‘Mr Green is here,’ said the third member of the party, another one who probably described his figure as ‘ample’, in an army uniform, ‘because the Cabinet and Prime Minister are unaccounted for. Mr Green has been appointed as acting Prime Minister in their absence. The country needs leadership at a time like…’</p>
<p>‘Appointed by who? Since there’s no fucking Cabinet and I haven’t seen anybody going round with a ballot box. Have you?’ He turned to Ganesh but didn’t wait for an answer. ‘And if there’s going to be an ‘acting Prime Minister’, why the fuck would anybody choose him? His entire contribution to government so far has been to give a couple of sweaty, ill-rehearsed interviews on Newsnight about the atrocious state of the nation’s sugar consumption, all while looking like his idea to tackle it was to eat the entire fucking stockpile himself. There’s a dozen other twats would make a better PM than him. Fuck, Nicola fucking Murray would make a better candidate than him…’</p>
<p>‘I’m sorry, do you have the proper security clearance to be in here?’ Margaret Blaine asked. Her accent was posh to the point of haughty, and she looked at Malcolm like he’d just pissed all over her favourite grandchild’s birthday cake.</p>
<p>‘Security clearance? I am the fucking security clearance around here.’</p>
<p>‘Not in a time of national emergency,’ said the army guy. ‘Kindly go away before I have you removed.’</p>
<p>‘Oh, I would like to see you fucking try,’ said Malcolm, though he saw the general nod to someone or something behind him, outside the room, and when he turned, Malcolm found a couple of the black-clad soldiers standing there, rifles across their chests.</p>
<p>‘We are trying to discuss the emergency protocols for alien incursion,’ said the general to the soldiers. ‘Mr Tucker does not appear to have the necessary clearance. Mr Ganesh, could you escort him back to the waiting room, please?’</p>
<p>‘I wrote those fucking protocols.’</p>
<p>Ganesh tapped Malcolm’s arm lightly. ‘Malcolm, maybe we’d better…’</p>
<p>Malcolm considered fighting it out. The rage inside him threatened to set him on fire, but there was something about the three figures in the room, stood there together like they already knew each other intimately and had some sort of secret they all shared, that made him hesitate. He’d made his share of mistakes throughout his career but he’d got as far as he had by listening to his instincts from time to time, and right now they were saying to get the fuck away from these people.</p>
<p>‘You will see me again,’ he said as a parting shot, but headed for the door.</p>
<p>‘I doubt it,’ said Margaret Blaine, then for some reason she and her two pals started to laugh. The sound of it made Malcolm’s skin crawl. He would never had admitted it, even under torture, but it was a relief to step back out into the hallway and see the soldiers close that door, shutting off his view of the Cabinet room.</p>
<p>‘What the actual fuck is going on?’ he said, thinking aloud, as he and Ganesh came back to the entrance hall. There were only soldiers and police here now, patrolling the checkerboard floor, but through an open doorway just opposite the foot of the stairs, Malcolm heard the babble of muted conversations. Everyone else, it seemed, had been herded into one of the front parlours, which was usually kept as a reception room for guests, members of the public getting awards for being socially minded little twats, raising money for badger sanctuaries, that sort of thing. Ganesh gestured towards the door and Malcolm went through, casting the soldiers one last glance over his shoulder, just to fix their positions in his mind in case it was useful later.</p>
<p>‘I heard they found a body,’ Ganesh replied in a low voice. Malcolm led him to a quiet corner of the room that didn’t have a conspiratorial huddle of its own yet and stood with his back to the wall, so that he could listen to Ganesh without taking his eyes off the people milling about.</p>
<p>‘In the river,’ Ganesh continued. ‘Something alien. They’ve taken it to Albion Hospital.’</p>
<p>Malcolm checked his phone again but there were no missed calls from any of the people he actually wanted to hear from. He tried the PM again, until the now-irritating network voicemail message started up, then he hit the disconnect button and exhaled, trying to slow his mind down enough to think.</p>
<p>‘Well, you’re MOD, right? So where are your people? You can’t be the most senior person they could find.’</p>
<p>‘I just got a call saying to come over here,’ said Ganesh. ‘I thought I’d be meeting the minister here.’</p>
<p>‘And they’ve said nothing to you?’ He gestured at the ceiling to indicate the rooms upstairs.</p>
<p>‘Nothing. But if I hear anything…’</p>
<p>Malcolm nodded and watched as the younger man headed off out the room. Through the open doorway, he saw him go upstairs and then he was out of sight. This whole thing was wrong. Maybe it was just because it was aliens this time rather than terrorists or anarchists but he didn’t think so. Whatever the threat, the response should be the same. It was old procedure, honed after 9/11 yes, but based on strategies that had been in place since the seventies. When something went wrong, the whole point of having emergency procedures was that everyone fell into their proper place and their proper job, the machine gearing up to face whatever it was trying to kill people this time. No one here was following procedure. Worse still, he had no idea what these people actually were trying to achieve, and that annoyed him. He was used to knowing most if not everything that went on along Whitehall. Being cut out of the loop was unnerving, and the last thing he wanted to do was let himself be spooked into a panic. That was when you made mistakes.</p>
<p>He’d been so engrossed in his own thoughts, he’d taken his attention off the other people in the room for a moment, and so only noticed the woman approaching him when it was too late to duck out of the way and avoid her.</p>
<p>‘Malcolm, thank fuck. What the hell is going on?’</p>
<p>Nicola Murray looked flustered, but then that was nothing new. She was still clutching onto a file on the latest upgrade to the immigration database, which was intended to convince the PM that there wouldn’t be another cock-up like the one her department created a few days earlier. One way of getting out of trouble, he supposed. Have an alien spaceship crash land before the PM has a chance to fire you.</p>
<p>‘Fucked if I know,’ Malcolm replied.</p>
<p>‘Someone said they’ve put Joseph Green in charge.’</p>
<p>Malcolm shrugged. ‘Supposedly. Didn’t know he was related to anyone important. Maybe he shagged someone.’</p>
<p>‘And there’s no Cabinet? No PM?’</p>
<p>‘I don’t know anything, Nicola, for once I’m as clueless as you, depressing though that thought is.’</p>
<p>She leaned closer, lowering her voice, as the two of them surveyed the various soldiers and civil servants about the place.</p>
<p>‘Is this some sort of coup?’ she asked.</p>
<p>‘By who? Joseph fucking Sugar Tits Green? He couldn’t organise an orgy at a nymphomaniacs’ convention.’</p>
<p>‘But I don’t know any of these people. Where are all the usual faces? Why is it all these nobodies, junior secretaries, ministers from God knows where… I mean, some woman just accosted me wanting to talk about cottage hospitals, and even I’d never heard of her.’</p>
<p>‘Harriet Jones,’ Malcolm said, though he wasn’t really giving Nicola his full attention any more. She was right. There were a few faces he recognised but none he knew well. They were all fairly new starts, or very, very junior staff. So where the hell were all the people who were supposed to be there?</p>
<p>‘That’s her,’ Nicola went on. ‘I mean, where’s Nicholson? Where’s Stephen Fleming for that matter?’</p>
<p>‘Hopefully the fucking spaceship hit him on the way past. Same with Julius.’ Though on the off chance, he tried Julius Nicholson’s number. It went straight to voicemail.</p>
<p>‘I heard,’ Nicola whispered, ‘that a load of people got messages just before all the shit hit the fan. Emergencies at home they had to deal with. People winning last minute trips to Disneyland. It’s like someone was trying to get everyone who knows what they’re doing out the way.’</p>
<p>‘Well, that would explain why you’re still here…’ Malcolm muttered, but he thumbed through his phone’s own voicemail menu at the same time, going back through the dozens of recent calls from people asking him what was going on until he found one the day before from a number he hadn’t recognised. At the time he’d thought it was probably a sales call, so hadn’t answered, but he had listened to it later when he’d seen the ‘new message’ icon on his screen. He played it again, holding the phone between him and Nicola so she might hear it as well, without it being loud enough for the whole room to listen in.</p>
<p>‘Mr Tucker,’ said the very posh, female voice. ‘My name is Elizabeth Gordon and I’m a ward sister at the Whittington Hospital in Highgate. I’m sorry to tell you this, Mr Tucker, but I’m afraid your wife was admitted a few hours ago. There was a road traffic accident on the A1 at the junction with the A406. I’m afraid she’s quite badly injured. I would suggest you get here as quickly as possible. Not to worry you, but there may not be much time.’</p>
<p>He cut the call and waited for Nicola’s reaction.</p>
<p>‘And, what, you just ignored that?’</p>
<p>‘Course I fucking ignored it,’ said Malcolm. ‘Because, and this goes any further than this bit of oxygen in between us and I will personally come after you like the wrath of fucking God, I haven’t made it public knowledge but my wife walked out on me two days ago. She’s in fucking Torquay with her sister and the kids. I phoned her as soon as I heard that and after she’d finished listing every fucking grievance she’s had for the last six fucking years, she finally told me that, no, she’s not been in any car accident and that she and the kids are absolutely fine. At the time I just thought it was Ollie or some other prick trying to be funny and failing miserably but now…’</p>
<p>‘Someone wanted you out the way as well.’</p>
<p>‘Looks like it. And I might be mistaken, but that posh twat on the phone sounded an awful lot like the posh twat upstairs posing as an MI5 liaison.’</p>
<p>‘Why posing?’</p>
<p>Malcolm shrugged. ‘Instinct. There’s something funny about the whole lot of them up there, not just Joe Green. They don’t… They don’t act right. I don’t know, it’s… it’s just a hunch.’</p>
<p>‘So, what the fuck do we do?’</p>
<p>‘Wait and watch,’ said Malcolm. ‘One of the fuckers’ll slip up eventually.’</p>
<p>A sudden flurry of activity erupted on the far side of the room and Malcolm glanced up to see Ganesh shoving his way through the soldiers and staff, all the while trying to look as nonchalant as possible and failing completely. He looked around, obviously searching for someone, then spotted Malcolm and hurried directly across the parlour.</p>
<p>‘Whatever’s going on,’ he said in a low whisper, ‘we’ve just had one of the pre-programmed alerts go off.’</p>
<p>‘For what?’ Malcolm asked.</p>
<p>‘Code nine.’</p>
<p>A chill rippled its way down Malcolm’s back despite the uncomfortable heating in the place.</p>
<p>‘You’re sure?’</p>
<p>‘Positive.’</p>
<p>‘Do they know?’ Again, Malcolm indicated upstairs.</p>
<p>Ganesh nodded, his expression grave.</p>
<p>‘How did they react?’</p>
<p>‘Seemed pleased enough. They’ve already sent for more than a dozen experts from different organisations, UNIT, SHADO, those people out of Cheyenne Mountain, and have a sort of conference set up for later on to discuss the alien. But this man… this Doctor, he’s supposed to be the best of them.’</p>
<p>‘So I’ve heard,’ Malcolm said. He’d read the files on the Doctor. Didn’t believe half of it and was fairly sure whoever made it up was drunk, stoned or both, but there were enough little grains of reality dotted through it to make his nerves wind a little tighter at the mention of the name. Supposedly whenever the Doctor turned up, people started to die.</p>
<p>‘I don’t get it,’ said Nicola. ‘What’s a code nine? Who’s the Doctor?’</p>
<p>‘An expert on aliens,’ said Ganesh. ‘<em>The</em> expert.’</p>
<p>‘I need to get upstairs,’ Malcolm decided. ‘Whatever’s going on, we’re not going to see it standing around here.’</p>
<p>‘They said…’ Ganesh began, a warning in his tone.</p>
<p>‘My office is up there,’ said Malcolm. ‘If they’re trying to keep everything as normal as possible, why would they be bothered about me going to my office? You can take me. Be my escort. In a platonic sense.’</p>
<p>Ganesh looked uneasy but nodded.</p>
<p>‘What do you want me to do?’ Nicola asked.</p>
<p>‘What do you mean, what do I want you to do? Keep the fuck out of trouble, that’s what.’</p>
<p>He gave Ganesh a pat on the shoulder, more to tell him to come on than for encouragement, then headed off towards the stairs.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>3.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Nicola watched from her little niche by the pot plant as Malcolm and the little bloke from the MOD sauntered past the guard at the parlour door as if they owned the place, then headed upstairs. Of course, that was the trick, wasn’t it? She’d learned that right at the start of her career, fresh out of teacher training college and on her first probationary posting. If you wanted to be left alone, walk up and down the school corridor with a bit of paper in hand but make sure you walk with purpose. Everyone will assume you’re meant to be there and ignore you. It’d got her through her probation and through the ranks to the headteacher’s office before she’d left to go into politics. Maybe it would see her right now. It wasn’t that she wanted to be in the middle of the fray, as such. It was more that, if something bad was going to happen, she’d rather be standing behind Malcolm, to let him snarl at it first, and wasn’t keen on letting him out of her sight.</p>
<p>Leaving the niche turned out to be harder than she thought though. Her legs refused to move, and she realised for the first time that she was terrified. People talked about butterflies in their stomach but hers felt more like a wasp’s nest had spit open inside her chest. She told herself to breathe and did a couple of those exercises she’d got from an audiobook her husband, James, gave her for last year’s Valentine’s. One of those whalesong and Enya-type music CDs with a patronising American telling you to embrace your inner light. It was a shit present and its exercises weren’t working now. Find Malcolm, she thought, and stick close. Use him as a sort of human nuclear blast shield.</p>
<p>Before she could muster the courage to move, however, the room surged with activity again, as a host of people, mostly in military uniforms of various colours, wandered into the entrance hall beyond the door. A blast of cold air snaked around the room as the outer door opened to admit these newcomers and brought a bit of relief from the stifling heat in the place. Maybe when this was over, she should put something together about monitoring Number Ten’s fuel consumption and saving the taxpayer a bit of money. Or would that be Environment’s job? She could probably swing it to have a social angle if she tried. The good thing about a hazy departmental brief like DoSAC, you could usually make anything you wanted fall under your remit. All it took was the right buzzwords.</p>
<p>There was a smell around the place too and it was getting stronger and more nauseating with every hour that passed. It even drowned out the mixture of sweat, garlic and cheap aftershave that lay in a fog over the whole building. Someone must’ve had the biggest case of halitosis on record, that’s what it reminded Nicola of. She’d smelled it on enough kids in class back in the day to recognise the odour. Again the draught brought a little respite but not much and not for long.</p>
<p>A thud of footsteps on the stairs outside drew her attention away from the new arrivals, who had drifted into the parlour and added to the uncomfortable crowd of people gathered in the middle. She spotted the little MOD guy – Ganesh, was that his name? – coming down towards them and saw from the way his eyes moved as he entered the parlour that he was doing a headcount of the new crowd. He made brief eye contact with her, but looked away sharply, perhaps not wanting anyone else to notice her, or was that being generous? Maybe he just didn’t care that she was still there. After all, it was Malcolm who’d had the sinister phonecall trying to lure him away. No one had called her. No one had apparently thought her important enough to take out of the picture.</p>
<p>Ganesh went off into the crowd and she lost sight of him momentarily amongst the taller soldiers, but another set of footsteps sounded outside and she glanced up to see the cottage hospital woman again, scurrying down with the air of someone trying to find a manager to complain to. They were possibly the same age, Nicola guessed, though if she were pressed, she’d say she’d worn a little bit better than this other woman, and certainly dressed better. People had the front to say she was frumpy! The woman wore a pale pink suit jacket with a matching t-shirt beneath - Marks and Spencer’s sale, probably, and about ten years ago at that - and a dark blue, ankle-length skirt. She had one of those short, layered haircuts that couldn’t decide whether it was blond or grey and so settled in the middle for a sort of mousy brown. Chunky gold-plated jewellery, probably BHS or Debenhams at a push, and for God’s sake, she was even wearing pearls. Nicola could well imagine how someone like that had been allowed to hang around, but why had no one tried to lure <em>her</em> away? That was just insulting. She was a government minister, for fuck’s sake.</p>
<p>The woman showed her ID to the armed policeman guarding the parlour door and muttered, ‘Harriet Jones, MP, Flydale North,’ before carrying on into the throng.</p>
<p>‘Ladies and gentlemen, can we convene?’ said Ganesh, his voice booming across the fog of conversation that had filled the place since the new people arrived. ‘Quick as we can, please. It’s this way on the right, and can I remind you, ID cards are to be worn at all times.’</p>
<p>Nicola finally found Ganesh again, as the crowd started towards the stairs. He moved against the general flow, heading for a tall man in a black leather jacket, whom Nicola could only see from the back. A smaller, very much younger blonde girl stood beside him in a white jacket and jeans. Ganesh intercepted them just as they reached the door to the entrance hall.</p>
<p>‘Here’s your ID card,’ he said, handing a badge over to the man. ‘I’m sorry, your companion doesn’t have clearance.’</p>
<p>‘I don’t go anywhere without her,’ said the man. His accent was Northern, Yorkshire, Lancashire, somewhere around there, and with the way he was dressed, Nicola wondered for a minute if he was there to repair something.</p>
<p>‘You’re the code nine, not her,’ said Ganesh. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor. It is the Doctor, isn’t it? She’ll have to stay outside.’</p>
<p>Or maybe not. Well, he certainly didn’t dress like an expert in aliens. Then again, what the fuck did an expert in aliens look like? David Icke? Was he an expert or a lunatic? Was there a difference?</p>
<p>‘She’s staying with me,’ the man insisted, and turned to head for the door again but Ganesh got in his path.</p>
<p>‘Look, even I don’t have clearance to go in there. I can’t let her in and that’s a fact.’</p>
<p>‘It’s all right, you go,’ said the girl. Dressed like a chav, sounded like a chav, thought Nicola. Maybe these two were those sort of conspiracy theory nuts you got a lot of in Highgate in the flats round the Archway and down into Camden, the ones who pinned pictures of crop circles and cattle mutilations to their walls and collected newspaper clippings of anything mentioning bright lights. They probably had a blog. Black background with unreadable coloured text and really annoying, ancient-looking graphics left over from a nineties desktop publishing CD-ROM.</p>
<p>The dowdy woman, Harriet what’s-her-name, meanwhile had crept up behind Ganesh and now stepped in between him and the two visitors.</p>
<p>‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Are you the Doctor?’</p>
<p>‘Sure,’ said the man in the leather jacket.</p>
<p>Ganesh rolled his eyes. ‘Not now. We’re busy. Can’t you go home?’</p>
<p>‘I just need a word in private.’</p>
<p>‘I suppose so,’ said the Doctor, then turned to the blonde girl. ‘Don’t get into any trouble.’</p>
<p>Another Malcolm, Nicola thought wryly. Though she noticed that the policeman by the door was watching their conversation with interest. So much interest, Nicola mused, that he might not notice someone tagging along behind the rest of the experts. Steeling herself and telling herself, like the patronising American on the CD had instructed, that she ‘had got this’, she strode towards the door, deliberately playing with her ID badge and lanyard as she passed through into the entrance hall, so that, hopefully, it would seem like she was listening to Ganesh’s warning about wearing them and making sure it was still on.</p>
<p>As she got to the steps, she deliberately fell in step beside a man in a khaki uniform - the patch on his shoulder said ‘U.N.I.T.’ though Nicola didn’t know what that was - since he was one of the few not accompanied by an assistant or other officer. She brought out her phone and studied the screen, so that if the officer looked at her, he’d think she was just some other expert who happened to have ended up there, but to any of the guards, they’d hopefully put her down as his PA or something.</p>
<p>Climbing a flight of stairs had never been so terrifying before but every single step she took, she waited for someone to yell, ‘Stop’. Not for the first time, she cursed her own hatred of enclosed spaces and wished she was able to comfortably use a lift rather than stairs. God alone knew it was hard enough at DoSAC, having to tramp up and down every day. Here she felt like a duck in a shooting gallery, and it was all she could do not to run when she reached the landing.</p>
<p>That was the part she hadn’t actually thought about. What did she do once she was upstairs and all the rest of them went off to their meeting? If Ganesh didn’t have clearance, she certainly didn’t. Maybe Malcolm didn’t either, if whoever was running this show didn’t want him around. Stick to plan A, she decided, and held the immigration database report a little in front of her as if she wanted to present it to someone. Then when the others, including that Doctor, started to veer towards one of the briefing rooms, she lifted her head a little higher and strode away in the most efficient-looking manner she could manage, towards the offices at the far end. The corridor fell quiet, and Nicola allowed herself to exhale, feeling like she’d been holding her breath for the last thirty years.</p>
<p>She only got as far as the open door to the Cabinet room when she heard people behind her again. Panic flared and on instinct, she ducked inside, only then taking a moment to make sure the room was empty, which thankfully it was. Though it was odd. There were usually name plates at each of the blotters along the table, since Cabinet members were always seated by superiority. The name plates were all gone, even the Prime Minister’s. Of course, it was always possible there’d been a reshuffle in the wind, but usually the government liked to pretend these things were spontaneous, reactions to public opinion or more usually a cock-up that had gone public, and so things like changing the names was left until the very last minute. Otherwise it was obvious the PM knew something was up weeks before the shit hit the fan. And you wouldn’t remove the Prime Minister’s name.</p>
<p>At the sound of approaching voices and footsteps, Nicola looked around hastily for somewhere to hide. Her skirt was far too tight to make crawling under the table an option, so she dashed instead for the walk-in cupboard in the far corner. She knew from experience it was never kept locked. Dan Miller had broken a few hearts and probably a couple of marriage vows in there, if legend were to be believed. It was the size of a box bedroom, though in the dark it seemed much smaller, but there was no choice. She got inside just as she heard the footsteps entering the Cabinet room and she froze, listening for shouts or any other signs that they’d seen her. Focus on them, she thought, and not on the tiny room.</p>
<p>‘They turned the body into a suit, a disguise for the thing inside.’ Harriet Jones’s voice. She sounded stressed. Nicola risked opening the cupboard door a half-inch or so, just enough to see out, though the angle still hid the other woman from her.</p>
<p>‘It’s all right.’ Chav girl from earlier. ‘I believe you. It’s… it’s alien.’</p>
<p>She saw the girl now. Slim, very, very young and maybe pretty to some folk, or in a certain light. She looked a bit like the teenage mothers Nicola had to shake hands with that time at a drop-in centre on some godforsaken estate in Wigan. Or like the girls in the clique in Ella’s new school. Damn Malcolm for ever making her send the kids there.</p>
<p>‘And what would you know about aliens,’ she found herself thinking. ‘You’re all of what, twelve?’</p>
<p>The girl seemed to be searching the room. Nicola’s heart staggered like a drunk coming out of a pub onto an icy pavement. What if she checked the cupboard? Then what? Did she have to punch a twelve-year-old chav who probably had five kids already? How were you supposed to know who to trust? Nicola watched her ducking to look under the conference table, check behind the curtain, then she went to one of the free-standing stationary cupboards at the end of the room.</p>
<p>‘They must have some serious technology behind this,’ she said, looking over her shoulder as she pulled open the door. ‘If we find it, we could use it.’</p>
<p>Nicola saw something tumble out of the cupboard, though it took a few seconds of staring at it as it lay on the floor before she figured out it was a body. A man in a suit. Even through a chink in the door and at a weird angle, she’d seen the man enough times in her life to recognise him. They had found their missing PM.</p>
<p>‘Oh, my God,’ said Chav girl. ‘Is that the…’</p>
<p>‘Harriet, for God’s sake.’ Ganesh had arrived. Nicola heard him stride into the room. ‘This has gone beyond a joke. You cannot just wander… Oh, my God. That’s the Prime Minister!’</p>
<p>‘Oh,’ said a new voice, one Nicola hadn’t heard before, though it reminded her a little of the voicemail on Malcolm’s phone. Well-educated, slightly sneering, and female. ‘Has someone been naughty?’</p>
<p>‘That’s impossible,’ said Ganesh, coming into Nicola’s line of sight. ‘The Prime Minister left Downing Street. He was driven away.’</p>
<p>‘And who was it told you that, hm?’ asked the unknown woman. ‘Me.’</p>
<p>She should help. Nicola gripped the door handle and willed herself to open it but couldn’t. The same fear that had paralysed her downstairs was back again. She watched through the small gap between door and frame as a weird, blue light flared up and cast eerie shadows over the horrified faces of the two women and Ganesh. Whatever they were looking at, Nicola didn’t want to see it.</p>
<p>A sound like a dozen people screaming came from along the hall. In the Cabinet room, a pale green, muscular arm reached out towards Ganesh and gripped him by the throat with enormous claws. Nicola clamped her free hand over her mouth to stifle her own screams and she closed her eyes, unable to bring herself to look. Aliens. The word kept pounding in her head like her pulse after a sprint. There was a fucking alien in the room. She didn’t want to see what the rest of it looked like. Its claws were enough.</p>
<p>The light changed again and she opened her eyes. Another flare, brighter this time but the same bluish white, filled the room. The alien arm withdrew. Whatever the light was, it clung to the alien, running over it like its own personal lightning storm, and the creature flailed around, letting out a low, droning cry. Ganesh fell to the floor. Christ, he looked like he was dead. Harriet Jones and the girl slipped away in the chaos and Nicola wanted so badly to go after them but she couldn’t get her feet to move.</p>
<p>After a few moments, the light faded and the room returned to normal. The creature’s cry ceased, and lumbering footsteps sounded on the carpet, heading away. It must be chasing them, Nicola thought, though she still couldn’t move. She drew the cupboard door completely shut and threw herself into complete darkness, though her hands shook so badly she could barely pull on the handle. Then she let herself sink down to the floor and sat with her knees hugged to her chest.</p>
<p>Aliens, she thought again. I’m going to be killed by aliens in a fucking cupboard, and no one will care. She took out her phone and let the glow from its screen illuminate a tiny globe in front of her, but there were no missed calls. James was at work, but surely he’d seen what was happening by now. And hadn’t even called to ask if she was all right. Fucking aliens, she thought, and even that won’t get him to think about someone other than himself for one fucking minute.</p>
<p>She sat on the floor of the cupboard and, though she felt irritated for it, began to cry.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>4.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Malcolm had a quick look in the briefing room as he passed, enough to see that it was empty, set up with rows of desks, projectors and stacks of dossiers no doubt to be handed to the experts. He ducked inside and grabbed one just out of interest before carrying on to his office. The whole place stank worse than Cowdenbeath on a Sunday morning and the heating was still on too high. The odour had managed to waft into his office even though the door was closed, so he quickly opened a window to let in some air. Nothing had been disturbed at least. Whoever was behind all this, they hadn’t been ransacking the offices. Or not his, anyway. He thought about checking the PM’s, but that was down another hallway and since he’d shut himself in, Malcolm had heard movement outside, a great big surge of activity followed by little flutters. Bit of a risk going out at that moment. He’d wait until it quietened down again. If this was some kind of coup, though it’d have to be the weirdest one he’d ever heard of, would they stay up all night? Or would there come a time when they had to sleep and he could have a nose around to his heart’s content?</p>
<p>Unless they were aliens, said an unwanted voice in the back of his mind. Fucking aliens. He didn’t want to admit it, but that made more sense than Joseph Green suddenly discovering he had balls, let alone finding he had enough to try and stage something like this. If aliens wanted to take over this country, the first place they’d try would be Whitehall. Take over key figures in government. Take out the ones that might oppose you.</p>
<p>Aye, well, you fucked that up, he thought, and fetched the bottle of twelve-year-old Jura single malt from his desk drawer. Because I’m still here.</p>
<p>It made sense they’d want people like him out of the way. People close to government would be more likely to spot an imposter. Why the fuck though would they pick someone like Joseph Green? He had no authority, no personality for that matter either. Why not have someone masquerade as the PM, or Deputy or Minister of Defence? The army general he could understand. Maybe this Asquith fellow had access to some nuclear shit or something. At the very least, he could summon up a few hundred squaddies to keep the peace until the alien overlords were well in place. If the blonde woman was actually MI5, then that could make sense as well. Get the secret service on side, stop any of them having a go once they realise what’s going on. But why Green?</p>
<p>Malcolm drained his glass and felt the warmth as the alcohol hit his system. Just enough to calm his nerves but not enough to dull him down. He put the bottle away to resist the temptation of a top up.</p>
<p>So far it looked like there were only three of them as well. That seemed weird. Although maybe they thought they could take over the government by stealth and so wouldn’t need a whole army of… whatever they actually were. Maybe they were like viruses and just took over people’s minds. Once they were planted in Green and the other two, maybe they’d breed and spread to other people. Then again, no one else seemed to be acting strangely. Then there was the farting. He’d noticed it during their conversation in the Cabinet room. In that short time, the bastards must’ve guffed six or seven times between the three of them. That, he realised, was the smell all around the place, that disgusting, rotten tooth smell. It had to come from them.</p>
<p>There had to be something about Joseph Green though that they wanted. Malcolm went over to his filing Cabinet and leafed through the index dividers until he found the section for G and his dossier on Green. It wasn’t a hefty document. The man had never done anything noteworthy in his life. MP for Hartley Dale. Backbencher. Chairman of the parliamentary commission on the monitoring of sugar standards in exported confectionary. Maybe the bastards wanted sugar. They looked like they were partial to a sweetie or fifty.</p>
<p>Malcolm sat up a little straighter in his chair and steepled his fingers. Could it be that easy? The one thing all three of them had in common was their size. All big buggers. Maybe, whatever these aliens were, they needed a bit of space to move around in. Would make sense as to why they got the PM out the way. He was a skinny bastard. Turn him sideways, he’d disappear. Same with the Deputy. And most of the other ministers. The only ones he’d seen around, Malcolm mused, were the bigger folk. Ben Swain was down there swaggering about. You’d fit an entire fucking army of aliens inside him. Were they aliens as well or were they just being kept around as possible homes for aliens?</p>
<p>What, though, did that get him? Besides locking up everyone over twelve stone in the country, he was no closer to figuring out what the fuck to do about all this.</p>
<p>Yes, you are, you stupid cunt, said the mind-voice again.</p>
<p>‘Yes, I am,’ Malcolm replied to it out loud. The code nine. Whatever might be the truth about this Doctor, according to the files, he got results in this sort of situation. And he was in this building.</p>
<p>That was when the screaming started.</p>
<p>The lights in Malcolm’s office dimmed as if something was draining the power, and the cries continued along the hall. The briefing room, he thought, getting to his feet. He looked around for something that could be a weapon, and cursed at the lack of suitable objects. He’d had the idea a while ago to keep a baseball bat under his desk so he could hit things really hard when he got annoyed, but Sam had talked him out of it, saying there was too much risk he’d hit an actual person and that would involve a lot of paperwork. He was still trying to work out what to do when the tone of the noises outside changed, from something all too horrifyingly human to a deeper, more animalistic sound. Flurries of running footsteps battered along the hall. Enough of this crap. He was going to see what was going on, armed or not.</p>
<p>He got his hand on the doorknob when someone came crashing into his office, knocking him off his feet. He hit the floor with a thud that knocked the air out of his lungs and he braced himself to fight whatever hideous creature came at him. Though the thing he saw looming down at him was a middle-aged woman in a pink jacket and pearls.</p>
<p>‘Malcolm, I’m so sorry,’ said Harriet Jones, offering her hand to help him up. ‘Are you all right?’</p>
<p>Malcolm dusted himself off and glowered at Harriet and at the young lass who followed her in. Both of them looked like they’d been running for their lives and were still glancing over their shoulder. Whatever had chased them, they still expected it to follow.</p>
<p>‘What the fuck is going on?’ he asked.</p>
<p>‘Sorry,’ said the girl, ‘but we’ve got a big alien after us. Is there another way out of here?’</p>
<p>‘Pantry,’ Malcolm said without thinking. He headed over to the door on the opposite side of the room and held it open. ‘You can cut through there back into the corridor.’</p>
<p>‘Well, you have to come with us,’ Harriet said. ‘The thing chasing us has already killed one person.’</p>
<p>‘Aye, well, it’ll take more than fucking ET to kill me.’</p>
<p>‘Malcolm, I know you think you’re indestructible, and politically that might well be true, but this creature is like nothing you’ve seen before. Literally nothing on Earth. The heroics can wait. Come with us.’</p>
<p>‘On you go then,’ Malcolm said, nodding towards the door. He watched the two of them pick their way past the piles of chairs and other catering gear that always collected in that little room, but he held back. He wanted to see it. Whatever it was, he wanted to see what he was up against. It was there, stomping about right outside his office door. His heart quickened as he heard it approach, then there was a crack of splintering wood and it burst through.</p>
<p>‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ he hissed.</p>
<p>It was green, and about seven or eight feet tall with long, muscular arms that ended in bloody great talons the size of bowie knives. The legs were shorter, but thick as telegraph poles and again, the feet were clawed. The thing’s face was small compared to the rest of it, and Malcolm found himself thinking irrationally of Geoff Holhurst and his tiny head. The monster looked about with two round, ink-black eyes then fixed its gaze on him. He really wanted that baseball bat in that moment. Glancing into the pantry he saw the next best thing, the disembodied leg from a tubular steel table. He darted in and grabbed it, then faced the creature again before it had time to rush him. It was still by the door though, swaying slightly, sizing him up. Malcolm gripped the steel pole in both hands.</p>
<p>‘Come on then, you ugly fucking cunt!’ he shouted. ‘You gonnae have a go?’</p>
<p>‘You should’ve gone to your wife,’ said the thing. Its voice was distorted, inhuman, and yet still feminine, and still slightly familiar.</p>
<p>‘Seriously?’ he said. ‘You’re the blonde bird? You’ve let yourself go, love.’</p>
<p>‘You weren’t supposed to be here,’ said the creature. ‘Though that won’t be a problem for much longer.’</p>
<p>The thing ran at him. Despite its stupid wee legs, it had a rapid turn of speed and was on him before he had time to think, let alone strike a blow. One of the claws caught him across his right shoulder and flung him across the room as easily as if he’d been an old rag. The pain didn’t hit until he was on the floor, then it all leapt up on him at once. His shoulder and arm burned and by the feel of his sides, he’d broken at least one rib. The alien made a throaty sound that he felt sure was a laugh and started towards him, moving slowly. That was deliberate, he thought. It wanted to enjoy this. It was getting off on his fear. He looked around for the table leg but couldn’t see it. It must’ve fallen into the pantry and there was nothing else nearby. Even if he could’ve found something, just the slightest movement of his arm turned the world red and felt like his brain was being torn apart neurone by neurone.</p>
<p>‘Oi!’ screamed a voice from the other side of the room.</p>
<p>The creature turned. Malcolm managed to raise his head enough to see the blonde girl back in the pantry doorway.</p>
<p>‘Thought it was us you was after?’ she shouted at the alien. ‘Or are you scared?’</p>
<p>She turned and ran. Malcolm saw the debate going on in the creature’s mind. It looked at him again, horridly babyish lips pursed in a frown. Then with a growl it swept away and lumbered off after the girl. A few crashes and clatters came from further down the hallway.</p>
<p>Injured though he knew he was, he also knew it was suicide to just lie there. There were at least three of these bastarding things in the building. That left two more prowling around. After a few deep breaths, he hauled himself over onto his side and swore as the pain overtook him again. Cursing through gritted teeth, he forced himself to breathe. It’s no worse than that time you got hit by a drunk driver at Hogmanay, he told himself, though he couldn’t quite find the courage yet to look down at his arm and shoulder. He felt the blood, warm and turning sticky, where it ran over the hand he had clutched against the wound, but he really didn’t want to see how bad it was. If he did, it’d instantly feel worse.</p>
<p>‘Just a fucking scratch,’ he told himself aloud. ‘Get up, you fuck. Get up!’</p>
<p>Grabbing the edge of his desk he managed to haul himself up, though he had to stand for a while, doubled over, until the dizziness and nausea subsided again. What if those fucking things had poison in their claws? What was the point of thinking about that now? That wasn’t going to get him to this Doctor, wherever the bastard was. Let’s just hope the expert to beat all experts knew what the fucking antidote was.</p>
<p>He lurched towards the door, moving like a zombie in a bad B-movie, and leaned for a minute on the jamb, listening to the corridor while he caught his breath. There were still thuds and crashes further along but it was calmer now. If this Doctor was the expert on aliens, he’d be where they were. So follow the chaos.</p>
<p>Step by painful step, he made his way along the corridor, aware he was leaving a trail of blood along the magnolia-coloured walls. That was Facilities’ worry though. The cleaning budget for that place was fucking astronomical. It had to be, for a place where politicians frequently got drunk together. They’d sort it.</p>
<p>Up ahead, he saw the open doorway to the Cabinet room and realised he’d lost track of where the crashes and footsteps were coming from. Exhausted, he stumbled through into the room and tried to grab one of the chairs at the conference table, though missed and fell to the floor. The impact sent fireworks bursting through his brain again and this time the pain in his shoulder spread down his nerves into his spine and legs and he felt like every cell was twisted in agony.</p>
<p>‘Get up,’ he told himself again, but this time he barely had the strength to pronounce the words. He tried to get to his feet and only managed to squirm a little further beneath the table, leaving dark stains across the carpet as he dragged himself along. Just before he passed out, he saw three figures come into the room.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Part Two</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>5.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Nicola sat up and held her breath as another round of thuds and clunks sounded somewhere in the Cabinet room beyond the door she was leaning against. She blinked, but there was only darkness around her, and the more she tried to listen, to try and make out what was going on in the room, the more her pulse throbbed in her ears and drowned everything out. After the initial disturbance, everything went quiet again for a few seconds, before she heard footsteps battering against the floor, people running so hard, she could feel the vibration of it in her cupboard on the other side of the room. This time there were voices, though she couldn’t make out the words. Sliding onto her knees, she reached up for the door handle and pulled it slowly, easing the door open a crack so she could hear.</p>
<p>‘Why would we invade this godforsaken rock?’ asked a man. It sounded like the general who’d been strutting around downstairs, although the voice had a strange timbre to it now, as if he was using some kind of distorter.</p>
<p>‘Then something’s brought the Slitheen race here,’ said a second speaker. This one she recognised as the northerner, the Doctor. Their alien expert, supposedly. ‘What is it?’</p>
<p>‘The Slitheen race?’ scoffed the general.</p>
<p>‘Slitheen is not our species,’ said a third. Joseph Green by the sounds of it, although again he sounded weird. ‘Slitheen is our surname. Jocrassa Fel Fotch Pasameer-Day-Slitheen at your service.’</p>
<p>‘So, you’re family?’ asked the Doctor.</p>
<p>‘A family business,’ replied Green.</p>
<p>‘Then you’re out to make a profit. How can you do that on a godforsaken rock?’</p>
<p>Nicola slowly got to her feet, moving carefully so as not to make a sound, and opened the door a little wider to look out, as the conversation over by the doorway continued. She saw the three figures now, standing with their backs to her. The Doctor was there, with his little blonde friend and the Jones woman, but outside… Nicola saw the creatures in full for the first time and choked back a cry of disgust and fright.</p>
<p>There were three of them, all identical as far as she could see, or was that racist? They were green and nearly eight feet tall, though their heads were too small for their expansive bellies and long arms. The eyes were the most disturbing part. They were black and beady, like a raven’s, even though they were the size of billiard balls. The three of them stood together outside, swaying now and then as if they could hardly contain the urge to pounce and tear their prey apart. There was no doubt they were predators. It was there in the shape of their monstrous claws.</p>
<p>‘Now we can end this hunt with a slaughter,’ said the one who sounded like the general, though he no longer bore any resemblance to him.</p>
<p>‘Don’t you think we should run?’ asked the blonde. The cockiness in her voice earlier was gone. She sounded like a frightened little girl now, and Nicola’s heart softened just a little towards her.</p>
<p>‘Fascinating history, Downing Street,’ said the Doctor, still chirpy and sounding like he’d escaped from Emmerdale. ‘Two thousand years ago, this was marshland. 1730, it was occupied by a Mr Chicken. He was a nice man. 1796, this was the Cabinet room. If the Cabinet’s in session and in danger, these are about the four most safest walls in the whole of Great Britain. End of lesson.’</p>
<p>Something whirred, and then the whole room shook with a deep, metallic clang that came from all sides. Behind her came a sound like a guillotine blade falling and she realised what was going on. She’d heard about the security system. Everyone who had to go into that room had to do an induction briefing on it, although her appointment had been so out of the blue, she’d done two Cabinet meetings before someone from HR finally got round to talking her through all the anti-terror measures. The Cabinet room could be completely sealed in the event of an emergency. It was one of the few traces John Major had left of himself in the building, a response to an IRA mortar attack on Number Ten in February ’91 that tried to wipe out his War Cabinet. The bomb had gone off in the back garden but even then, the windows were bombproof glass, so no one was hurt. Still, it had prompted the government into taking more precautions. Major at the time had said, ‘<em>Our determination to beat terrorism cannot be beaten by terrorism’, </em>but Nicola wondered if he’d ever thought it might be beaten by aliens from outer space.</p>
<p>‘Installed in 1991,’ said the Doctor, sounding pleased with himself. ‘Three inches of steel lining every single wall. They’ll never get in.’</p>
<p>‘And,’ said the blonde girl, ‘how do we get out?’</p>
<p>‘Ah,’ replied the Doctor after a brief pause.</p>
<p>The girl was right, Nicola realised. They were shut in. Panic snatched her breath for a second and she had to close her eyes and do a few controlled exhalations to calm down again. She was stuck with this Doctor, whoever he was, although she supposed it was better him than those aliens. She should go and speak to them, she decided, before they started searching the place and found her and thought she was one of the bad guys. It’d give her something to do so she didn’t have to think about those steel walls sealing the whole place. Maybe they’d think she had a huge, green monster inside her as well and would dissect her or something. Oh, Christ, she’d known this was going to be a fucking awful day when she got up, but she’d thought the worst of it would be listening to Malcolm calling her a twat, or probably something worse, for the immigration data debacle. And where the hell was Malcolm anyway? Had the aliens got him? Was he an alien? That wouldn’t exactly have surprised her. There was always something a little superhuman about Malcolm Tucker. No, best thing to do was to announce herself to this Doctor.</p>
<p>She pulled the door open very slowly, hoping its hinges were well-oiled, then she stepped out of the cupboard in her stocking soles, having taken off her shoes a while back in case she had to run. It was ridiculous sexism having to wear heels anyway. She had perfectly good trainers back in her desk drawer, but no, she couldn’t wear those to Number Ten because she had to be in office wear, possibly the least practical thing to run away from aliens in. She was so busy trying to close the door silently and thinking what she was going to say to this alien-fighting navvy that she didn’t notice Indra Ganesh’s body until her foot struck his side. The corpse of the Prime Minister lay nearby too, face down.</p>
<p>‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ she gasped in fright, and swallowed back a bit of bile.</p>
<p>The Doctor, Harriet Jones, and the little blonde girl turned in unison to face her. Well, she thought, that’s one way to introduce yourself.</p>
<p>She took hold of the nearest chair to steady herself and dusted down her skirt, noticing that her tights were ripped to hell. She must look a complete mess, she realised, and then saw Harriet Jones staring at her from the other side of the conference table. She maybe wasn’t all that fashionable, but she was a damn sight more composed than Nicola felt.</p>
<p>‘Who are you?’ the Doctor asked, folding his arms as he eyed her critically. He looked like a nightclub bouncer trying to figure out if she was ‘hip’ enough to get past the velvet rope.</p>
<p>‘Nicola Murray. Secretary of State for Social Affairs and Citizenship.’</p>
<p>‘What were you doing in the cupboard, Nicola Murray, Secretary of State for Social Affairs and Citizenship?’</p>
<p>‘I…em…’ Nicola tried to form words, but only gulped for air. Oh Christ, she was going to cry in front of these people.</p>
<p>‘You look like you could use a drink,’ said Harriet Jones, heading towards her with a crystal decanter and glass. It was port, which Nicola hated, but at that moment she would’ve happily drunk lighter fluid if it took some of the edge off. She found herself looking again and again at the two corpses on the floor, aware that the Doctor and the others were edging towards her, but unable to go to them, not if it meant stepping over bodies.</p>
<p>‘How did you get in here?’ the Doctor asked.</p>
<p>‘I just… I was looking for a colleague of mine. He came up here a while ago and then those things…What the hell are those things?’</p>
<p>‘Slitheen, apparently,’ the Doctor said, in the same tone he might’ve used to tell her it was supposed to rain tomorrow.</p>
<p>‘But, they…’ Nicola began. Before she got any further, a low moan came from the other side of the table. The Doctor turned and darted around, Harriet and the girl following. Nicola instinctively went to go after them, then looked at the bodies again and opted to go round the other way instead.Her breath caught in her throat. Malcolm lay beneath the conference table on his back, half his shirt stained brown with dried blood. The fabric at the shoulder was torn into ribbons, as was the flesh beneath. She was sure she even glimpsed a fleck of exposed bone in amongst the mess and was equally sure she was going to be sick. She needed out of that room. Those sealed-off windows and their steel shutters made the whole place feel like one giant lift car. She grabbed the back of a chair and breathed deeply, fighting back nausea.</p>
<p>‘That your colleague?’ asked the Doctor, crouching on his haunches. He reached down and pressed two fingers against Malcolm’s neck.</p>
<p>Nicola nodded and swallowed. ‘His…his name’s Malcolm Tucker. Did... did those creatures…’</p>
<p>‘He’s had a run-in with one of them by the looks of it. He’s lucky to be alive. They don’t usually let their prey off this lightly.’</p>
<p>Harriet Jones hurried off at a brisk pace, brushing past Nicola as if she didn’t exist.</p>
<p>‘There ought to be a first aid kit in here,’ she said, going to the cupboard where, only a few minutes earlier, though it felt like a lifetime, Nicola had seen the Prime Minister’s corpse tumble out onto the floor. After only a moment, Harriet returned to Malcolm’s side with a green plastic case in hand. She knelt on the floor and opened the box, then rifled in its contents and started unpacking gauzes and bandages.</p>
<p>‘You know what you’re doing?’ the Doctor asked her.</p>
<p>‘I was a nurse for twenty years, Doctor. In theatre for ten of those. Are there any bottles of water in here, dear?’</p>
<p>The girl scurried off and started hunting around the room. Nicola, glad of something to contribute, brought her own bottle of Evian out of her handbag.</p>
<p>‘Here.’</p>
<p>‘Thank you,’ said Harriet with a smile.</p>
<p>‘What made you go into politics?’ asked the Doctor, who leaned over Harriet’s shoulder, watching her work.</p>
<p>‘The Health and Social Care Act 2003. We were already under so much stress and then the government decided to completely restructure the NHS, give the power over to financiers who wouldn’t know a catheter from a cappuccino. We were working flat out, understaffed, being shouted at from all sides because the new Trust was worried its rating might drop or some such nonsense and I just thought, I took this up because I wanted to make a difference, but all we’re doing now is running around a leaky pipe trying to patch the holes when what was needed was someone to shut off the stop valve and approve a hefty budget to have the thing made fit for purpose. It was my mother gave me the idea that I could make more of a difference if I could get nearer the actual people making the decisions.’</p>
<p>She finished pouring what was left of Nicola’s water over Malcolm’s shoulder and dabbed at the wound with a piece of gauze.</p>
<p>‘Don’t you want some of the port for that?’ asked the girl.</p>
<p>‘Oh no,’ said Harriet. ‘Does more harm than good. Alcohol can increase the inflammation and actually damage the tissue even more. No, water is fine. Can you open some of those for me, Rose dear?’</p>
<p>Rose, that must be her name. She looked more like a Tiffany, Nicola thought, then chided herself. The girl was helping, without hesitation, which was more than she’d been able to do. Harriet had gestured towards some of the little square packets of gauze and dressings, and the girl got on her knees and started unwrapping.</p>
<p>‘You’re the alien expert,’ Nicola said, trying to get her head around everything. The Doctor had started pacing around the room but now he paused and grinned at her.</p>
<p>‘That’s me.’</p>
<p>‘How does one become an alien expert?’</p>
<p>‘Well, being an alien helps,’ said the Doctor.</p>
<p>Nicola let out a short laugh, which died when she saw his expression hadn’t changed and didn’t hold any trace of a wind-up.</p>
<p>‘Being an… right. So what are these things then?’ she asked.</p>
<p>‘No idea. Never come across them before. One family, organising all of this. Got to be something here on Earth they want, something they think they can sell.’</p>
<p>‘Us?’ Nicola asked, with a shudder. She was sure her eldest, Katie, had made her sit through a film once where the aliens wanted humans for food. Oh, God, she thought suddenly. Katie. And the others. Stuck in this room, she wouldn’t be able to call them, or take their calls if anything happened.</p>
<p>‘If they wanted humans,’ said the Doctor, ‘they’d’ve started rounding you up by now. Plus, they’re too offhand about killing people. One of them mentioned a hunt. Could be sport, I suppose. But still, you keep your game birds on a reserve and you look after them. They haven’t done anything like that.’</p>
<p>Malcolm coughed and wheezed out a cry of pain in response to something Harriet did and Nicola instinctively took his hand, though it was covered in dried blood.</p>
<p>‘Easy, easy,’ Harriet whispered. ‘Malcolm, can you hear me?’</p>
<p>Malcolm opened his eyes and blinked at the scene around him for a second, his expression the calmest Nicola had ever seen on him, ironically, at least until he tried to sit up. He swore and Harriet laid a gentle but firm arm across his chest to hold him down.</p>
<p>‘I think it’s best you stay where you are for now,’ she said, then smiled down at him. ‘Harriet Jones, MP, Flydale North.’</p>
<p>‘I know who you are,’ Malcolm replied. ‘The fuck is going on?’</p>
<p>He glanced down at his hand, which Nicola still held in her own, then shook her off and felt at the bandages Harriet had managed to wrap around his shoulder.</p>
<p>‘Here,’ said the Doctor, who’d wandered round to the other side of the table and was standing by the fireplace. He tossed something over to Harriet. She caught it effortlessly. Nicola found herself feeling slightly impressed. Fuck it, more than slightly impressed. The woman was handling the situation with Thatcher-like resolve for God’s sake.</p>
<p>‘Stick it on his neck,’ said the Doctor.</p>
<p>‘What is it?’ Harriet asked.</p>
<p>‘Painkillers. Won’t last long, though. He’ll need proper medical treatment.’</p>
<p>Harriet stuck the thing, which to Nicola looked like a nicotine patch, onto Malcolm’s skin and his breathing eased almost instantly.</p>
<p>‘That would involve us getting out,’ Harriet said.</p>
<p>‘Yeah,’ replied the Doctor. ‘Working on that.’</p>
<p>A stale silence fell over the room then, broken only by the rustle of plastic wrapping or the shift of fabric as Harriet continued working, securing Malcolm’s arm against his chest in a sling. Nicola stayed by his side for want of anything else to do, although she felt useless just watching what was going on. When the girl, Rose, offered her another glass of port, she took it without question, and looked up to see the blonde smiling down at her almost shyly. Maybe she was picking up on the hostility and trying to ease the tension, Nicola thought, and instantly felt guilty. Make an effort, woman, she told herself.</p>
<p>‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘So, do you help your dad out on these things a lot?’</p>
<p>She knew right away she’d said the wrong thing from Rose’s expression.</p>
<p>‘He’s not my dad,’ said the girl.</p>
<p>‘Oh, sorry. So what…’</p>
<p>‘He’s… my friend.’</p>
<p>Dirty old bastard, Nicola thought, glancing over at the Doctor, who was leafing through a document with an official stamp on the cover. From the amount of blood on it, Malcolm must have brought it in with him.</p>
<p>‘Isn’t it a bit dangerous, though,’ Nicola said. ‘If this is the sort of thing he deals with all the time, should he really be bringing you along? I mean, don’t you have school?’</p>
<p>‘I’m nineteen. I’ve left school.’</p>
<p>‘So, what is this? Like, some sort of apprenticeship?’</p>
<p>‘Something like that,’ the Doctor put in.</p>
<p>‘You’re the Doctor?’ Malcolm asked. He’d managed up into a sitting position with Harriet’s help, though he’d even less colour than usual in his cheeks and dark shadows under his eyes. ‘What happened in the briefing? Do we have a plan?’</p>
<p>‘’Fraid not,’ the Doctor replied. ‘Whoever these creatures are, they wanted rid of anyone who might have the expertise to work against them. All your experts are dead.’</p>
<p>‘Except you.’</p>
<p>‘Didn’t reckon on non-human interference.’</p>
<p>‘That’s the second time you’ve said something like that,’ Nicola interrupted. ‘Are you trying to say you’re not human?’</p>
<p>‘Not trying to say anything,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’m not human. Not even remotely.’</p>
<p>Nicola glanced over at Malcolm, actually hoping to see a glint of a smirk in his eyes, that this was some wind-up at her expense, but he looked deadly serious, and not at all surprised by this piece of information.</p>
<p>‘What, the government has an alien on its payroll?’ she asked him.</p>
<p>‘Does that really surprise you? I mean, it’s been paying Glenn Cullen for the last God knows how many years. It’s not exactly picky.’</p>
<p>‘I’m not on anybody’s payroll, thank you,’ the Doctor contradicted.</p>
<p>‘Oh, God, are you some sort of quango?’ asked Nicola.</p>
<p>‘No, I’m a Time Lord. Think of me as an independent consultant.’</p>
<p>‘Yes, but who are you working for?’</p>
<p>His slightly inane grin was gone now and, despite the casual clothes and offhand manner, Nicola saw the air of authority around him then. It was in his eyes, she thought.</p>
<p>‘Me,’ he said, and there was no room in that one syllable for any argument.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>6.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Malcolm managed to get to his feet only by grabbing a chair and hauling himself off the floor with all the dignity of a drunk Aberdonian girl in stilettos coming home off a hen night. Whatever that was they’d stuck on his neck, he wished he had a stash of them. His shoulder and ribs still hurt a bit, but what had been immobilising pain was down to the level of a moderate hangover. He figured out fairly quickly that he was in the Cabinet room, though he didn’t remember how he got there. A few vague images of something large and green coming at him with very big claws flashed across his mind, though nothing solid enough to call an actual memory. Something had got him though. That was a sixty quid shirt ruined for starters. The shutters were down, he spotted. Someone had thrown the old Major Incident Switch but that meant they were sealed in. Locked in a steel cage with Nicola Murray. Maybe that green thing had killed him and this was hell. Now she was interrogating the Doctor about stuff that didn’t matter. Why was that not surprising?</p>
<p>‘Do we know where…’ Malcolm began, hoping to interrupt her, but just as he spoke, his gaze fell on the other side of the room and what looked unpleasantly like two bodies lying on the floor. One of them was the MOD guy, Ganesh. Nothing but a wee boy. He’d probably only left his halls of residence to take up this job. And he’d been good. He’d had potential. Kept the head and took control. That was rare these days. The other man sprawled on the carpet though… Malcolm’s stomach lurched like he’d just seen Anne Widdecombe naked. He’d thought of a dozen ways to kill the PM over the course of his career, but seeing him actually dead in the middle of what was probably the biggest crisis the country had ever faced brought no satisfaction.</p>
<p>‘You think they got rid of everyone they didn’t need?’ he asked.</p>
<p>‘Possibly,’ said the Doctor. ‘I think they’ve been planning this for a long time.’</p>
<p>If the PM was dead, the rest of the Cabinet might be as well. Assuming anyone survived this and managed to get rid of the green bastards, the country was going to dive into chaos.</p>
<p>‘It’s the long-term plan I’m worried about,’ the Doctor went on. ‘They want this planet for something and I’m guessing it won’t be good.’</p>
<p>‘What the fuck are UNIT doing in all this?’</p>
<p>‘Watch your language,’ the Doctor chided. ‘And UNIT’s top scientists, present company excluded, just got zapped. UNIT probably don’t even know what’s going on yet. Anyway, what can they do? Attack Downing Street? With no foolproof way of telling who’s real and who’s an alien?’</p>
<p>‘Do you think there’s more of them?’ asked the girl. Malcolm thought he’d heard someone call her Rose. He’d read in the Doctor’s file that he liked to keep humans round about him to make him feel clever, though it looked like he’d really topped the thickometer with this one.</p>
<p>‘Don’t know,’ the Doctor replied. ‘They said they’re a family, but without knowing who they are or where they’re from, there’s no way of knowing how bit a unit that might be.’</p>
<p>‘Let’s hope they’re not from fucking Paisley. There’ll be millions of the bastards,’ Malcolm remarked.</p>
<p>‘Oi,’ said the Doctor, then turned his attention back to his little girlfriend. ‘Why, what you thinking?’</p>
<p>‘Just hope my mum’s all right, that’s all.’</p>
<p>‘She’ll be fine. No self-respecting alien would mess with her.’</p>
<p>‘You’re still cheesed off she slapped you?’</p>
<p>The Doctor shrugged, but there was something disingenuous about his expression. So the mother clocked him one, Malcolm thought, taking out his phone to cover the fact he was listening in to their conversation. No point in letting them think they were interesting. There’d been nothing in the file about anything dodgy between the Doctor and his little pals, but hey, maybe he liked them young. Alien cradle-snatchers fighting alien body-snatchers.</p>
<p>‘Are there more of them out there?’ Nicola asked.</p>
<p>‘He’s just said he doesn’t know,’ Malcolm told her.</p>
<p>‘But I mean, my kids are…’</p>
<p>‘Pretty much everyone in this building has kids, Nicola. There’s nothing we can do about it from in here and panicking about it isn’t going to achieve anything. There’s three inches of fucking steel around this room and a bunch of not-so-fucking-little green men outside the door waiting to eat us, so will you just keep out the way, which is what I told you to do whenever the fuck that was ago anyway, and let us figure out what we’re doing?’</p>
<p>‘Right, I already told you,’ the Doctor cut in, sounding like a parent who’d had enough of his kids bickering, ‘enough with the swearing. It’s not helping.’</p>
<p>‘Yeah, you make my mum sound like a nun,’ added Rose.</p>
<p>‘Let’s see what we’ve got. Any computer terminals in here?’</p>
<p>‘No, not in here,’ Malcolm said. ‘They were talking about putting something in but it’s not been approved yet. Might be some equipment in the cupboard, but usually they all just sit playing with their Blackberries.’</p>
<p>‘Not too helpful in a sealed metal box, though, is it?’ asked the Doctor. ‘So no connection to the internal network?’</p>
<p>‘No.’</p>
<p>‘And no secret tunnels?’ asked Rose. ‘No way out?’</p>
<p>‘No,’ Malcolm replied. ‘The room was meant to withstand a terror attack, not a siege. The idea was that if someone lobbed a bomb at the place, the important people would be fine, everyone else could be replaced.’</p>
<p>‘Nice.’</p>
<p>Malcolm shrugged, though regretted it when a spark of pain flared through his shoulder. ‘What, you think this government’s any different to the last fifty that have sat in here? Look after your own, those and such as those. Ninety-nine per cent of policy-making is trying to save your own arse and your own cushy job. If it happens to benefit the great unwashed masses, it’s pure coincidence.’</p>
<p>‘Thought your lot was supposed to be better.’</p>
<p>‘Some people might think being hit by a bus is better than being mauled by an angry lion, but you’re still fucking dead at the end of it. Sorry, sorry.’ The Doctor was glowering at him again and he raised his uninjured arm in a gesture of conciliation.</p>
<p>‘So there’s no way out of here except opening up the shutters and going out that door,’ said the Doctor.</p>
<p>‘Where’s your magic box you’re supposed to have?’ Malcolm asked. ‘Was that not in the file?’</p>
<p>‘It’s parked outside my estate,’ said Rose.</p>
<p>‘That’ll be on bricks by the time you get back then.’</p>
<p>‘Oi!’ Rose swiped at him but he dodged her easily.</p>
<p>‘Doesn’t have wheels,’ said the Doctor, disinterestedly. ‘What time is it?’</p>
<p>‘Time Lord and you don’t know what time it is?’ laughed Rose.</p>
<p>‘I haven’t got a watch. And you humans use a weird system.’</p>
<p>Without thinking, Malcolm put his hand in his trousers pocket and pulled out the battered old pocket watch that, somehow, he knew was there, even though as he looked at it in his hand, he couldn’t actually remember having picked it up anywhere. Come to mention it, he couldn’t remember where the hell it had even come from, and why go for that when he had a perfectly good wristwatch? But before he had the chance to click its button and open the case, Rose pulled out her phone.</p>
<p>‘Just gone half nine.’</p>
<p>‘At night?’</p>
<p>‘Yeah.’</p>
<p>‘Do you think they’ll sleep?’ asked Harriet Jones.</p>
<p>‘No idea,’ said the Doctor. ‘But they’re still trying to convince the military and the police that they’re the genuine article, so it’s possible they’ll stand things down for a while just to keep up the charade. Could be a chance to slip past them. The door’s too risky. They could’ve left a guard outside, but if we could get one of these windows open…’</p>
<p>The Doctor wandered over and felt around the teeth of the steel shutters that had clamped down over the window glass.</p>
<p>‘I don’t think you can open one bit without the whole lot coming up,’ Malcolm told him.</p>
<p>‘No, but if I can isolate the mechanism in this one window,’ said the Doctor, ‘cut off the power and find something strong enough to lever it up, I should be able to get it open for a bit without the whole thing going off.’</p>
<p>‘Lever it up with what? You got a spare crowbar up your ar… up your trouser leg?’</p>
<p>‘No, why? Have you? Have a look round, all of you. There’s got to be something but it’ll have to be strong.’</p>
<p>‘What if just all of us hold it while one person goes out?’ Rose suggested.</p>
<p>‘Nah,’ said Malcolm. ‘Weight of that, it’ll rip your fingers off.’</p>
<p>‘What about a chair?’ asked Harriet. ‘If we can get the shutters open enough to jam something inside…’</p>
<p>‘Could work,’ said the Doctor. He was still examining the window, running some sort of device over it. It looked like a pen torch with a bright blue light, though it made a kind of whirring sound, and didn’t seem to do much else. Harriet meanwhile had grabbed one of the chairs from the conference table and had, somehow, managed to get Nicola Murray to stop standing around like a Dorothy Perkins shop dummy and help her. The two of them came over with one of the hefty wooden chairs and set it down near the window. Thank God the government hadn’t got rid of those during one of their streamlining phases, but then the last thing they’d skimp on was their own comfort.</p>
<p>‘It won’t work,’ Malcolm said. ‘Even if you get the plates lifted, the window’s sealed. Bombproof glass. Nothing you fling at it’ll break it.’</p>
<p>The Doctor waved whatever that stupid little whirry, lighty-up thing was he had. ‘Ever see an opera singer smash a wineglass with a high note? Just a matter of finding the right frequency. Leave that to me.’</p>
<p>‘Even if someone gets out there,’ said Harriet, ‘what then? For all we know, the place is swarming with these... Slitheen or whatever they’re called.’</p>
<p>‘Well, first one out’s our sweary hard man here,’ said the Doctor.</p>
<p>‘What?’ Malcolm glowered at him. ‘I don’t…’</p>
<p>‘That patch isn’t going to last much longer and when it wears off, you’ll be no use to anyone. Whoever’s out next, make sure he gets to a hospital.’</p>
<p>‘Okay, okay,’ Malcolm relented, ‘I get your logic, but the girl should go first. She’s only a kid, for fuck’s sake… sorry.’</p>
<p>‘I’m staying with him,’ Rose declared.</p>
<p>‘He’s got a point,’ said the Doctor.</p>
<p>‘No, he hasn’t. Either we’re all going out, or I’m staying here with you.’</p>
<p>‘There’s not going to be time for us all to get through. That chair’ll hold it open for a bit but not for long.’</p>
<p>‘Then that’s settled then, innit? Nicola says she’s got kids. So it should be her next, then Harriet.’</p>
<p>‘Well, for once in my life, I agree with Malcolm,’ said Harriet Jones. ‘I’m not comfortable with the idea of a child staying here while…’</p>
<p>‘I am not a child,’ Rose insisted. A little flush of anger coloured her cheeks.</p>
<p>‘My dear, I’m over fifty. Anything under twenty-one is a child to me.’</p>
<p>‘I’m staying with him,’ Rose said. ‘But…’</p>
<p>‘But what?’ asked the Doctor.</p>
<p>Rose looked hesitantly around the group, as if looking for something particular in each of their expressions. Whatever it was, it was Malcolm she fixed on at last.</p>
<p>‘If you get out all right,’ she went on, ‘can you get someone to check on my mum? Her name’s Jackie Tyler. She lives on the Powell Estate in Peckham. Number 48, Bucknall House.’</p>
<p>‘Sure,’ said Nicola, before Malcolm had a chance to answer. ‘I’ll make sure someone goes round.’</p>
<p>‘Another thing,’ said the Doctor, stepped up towards Malcolm. In doing so, he placed himself like a barrier between them and the rest of the group. ‘Once you’re out, there’s something I’ll need you to do. Assuming you’ve got some clout with the MOD.’</p>
<p>‘If you mean are they scared enough of me to do what I tell them, then sure.’</p>
<p>The Doctor handed him a folded slip of paper, but glanced sideways towards Rose and lowered his voice. ‘In your pocket. The others don’t need to know.’</p>
<p>Malcolm nodded and slipped the paper into his trouser pocket, while the Doctor headed back to the others.</p>
<p>‘Right,’ he said loudly. ‘If we’re gonna do this, let’s do it. Harriet, you ready with that chair? Rose, give her a hand. Nicola, grab that decanter tray. It’ll do to lever up the two halves. Everyone know what they’re doing?’</p>
<p>There were murmurs of assent from around the room, then the Doctor moved to stand just at the side of the window, while Harriet Jones held the chair, struggling a little under the weight of its hefty, wooden frame until Rose took one of the legs and helped her. Nicola Murray took a ridiculously long time to lift a couple of crystal decanters off a fucking tray and bring it over, but she eventually got herself into position, holding the thing level with the join in the steel plates.</p>
<p>‘Okay,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’m going to get rid of the outer window then try to isolate the power supply to the window plates, so when I tell you, jam that thing in and try and push them apart. Soon as it’s wide enough, get the chair in.’</p>
<p>He waved his little torch thing over the window and the whirring noise began again, changing in pitch this time as he fiddled with buttons on the barrel of it, until finally there was a loud crack from behind the steel plate. The tinkle of thousands of fragments of glass trickling down to the ground below followed, and the Doctor gave another of those moronic grins. He really did think he was the dog’s bollocks, Malcolm thought. Then the Doctor focused his attention and the little torch on the window frame. Something inside the wall let out a dull clunk and an electronic sigh, like a PC’s fan shutting down only five times as loud.</p>
<p>The Doctor dashed in and grabbed the other side of the tray Nicola was feebly trying to shove into the seam between the two plates. Lucky it was only silver plate, not solid silver, so it didn’t bend and after a lot of grunts and swearing on Nicola’s part – she didn’t get told off, Malcolm noticed – they got the metal into the gap and slowly prized the sheets of steel apart. It irked him that he couldn’t help, but with one arm out of action, all Malcolm could do was keep out of the way. The Doctor took most of the weight himself then Harriet and the girl moved in to wedge the chair into the space they’d created. A wash of cold air came in through the shattered window and brought a few flecks of rain with it. Fresh air, Malcolm thought, and realised how much he’d missed that in the last few hours.</p>
<p>‘Out,’ the Doctor ordered. He kept a hold on the shutter and Malcolm figured he was still taking most of the weight himself, although his face was turning scarlet from the effort. Getting through the window was awkward with only one arm free, but Malcolm felt someone helping him through and after a couple of seconds where he felt sure he would end up stuck and sliced in half when the shutter fell again, he tumbled out into the night air and landed on the damp grass of the back garden’s neatly kept lawn.</p>
<p>The impact rattled through every bone in his skeleton, and despite the Doctor’s patch, he had to lie for a while until he got his breath back and the pain subsided enough to think about getting up. Just as he got to his knees, another loud crack came from just above them, wood splintering, a hiss of metal sliding against metal, then Nicola thudded onto the lawn beside him as the shutters sealed once more.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>7.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Nicola felt the rush of air behind her when the shutter came down and let out a shriek as she fell forward onto the lawn. A couple of seconds longer coming through that window and she would’ve been mincemeat, she thought, and sat on the grass trying to catch her breath. The lawn was damp and a cold breeze buffeted around the garden, making her shiver, but she had to admit it was good to be outside. She picked a few splinters of wood out of her hair and looked around. Though night had fallen, there were lanterns dotted around the gardens, masked now and then as the trees shook in the wind. There was enough light to see that she and Malcolm were alone. No soldiers. No police. They mustn’t have thought anyone could get out into the garden, or would want to, and there was no access to it from outside, not since the late eighties when the gates had gone up on either end of Downing Street.</p>
<p>Malcolm, shit! She’d nearly forgotten about him. She found him kneeling just behind her with his eyes closed and his head low, and she could see the pain etched on his face but had no idea what to do about it. She doubted he was the sort who’d want a cuddle and a few pleasantries even if she knew how to give any of that. Christ, her knees hurt. It was too dark to see properly but she was sure she’d taken half the skin off, between that carpet on the cupboard floor and then falling through a window. Maybe she could get compensation for this. Did alien invasion count as a workplace injury?</p>
<p>‘Are you just going to fucking sit there?’ Malcolm asked her. He sat clutching his shoulder, glowering at her.</p>
<p>‘Well, where are we going?’ she replied. ‘There’s a six-foot wall all around this place and then even if we got over that, there might be fucking aliens or something in the street.’</p>
<p>Malcolm got to his feet with great effort and a lot of cursing through gritted teeth, then lurched off towards the back wall that separated the garden from Horseguards’ Parade. Nicola could happily have sat on the grass, sodden though it was, for another hour but she forced herself to her feet and went after him. He went to a wooden door set into the wall and tried the handle, but it rattled in the frame and refused to open. Nicola looked up at the wall and decided there was no way she could get over that, and neither could Malcolm in his current state.</p>
<p>‘Didn’t really think this through, did we?’ she said.</p>
<p>‘Not fucking helping, Nicola.’</p>
<p>‘Hands in the air!’ barked an American voice right behind them.</p>
<p>‘Fuck,’ Nicola muttered, then raised her hands and turned slowly. A single soldier in one of those ‘UNIT’ uniforms stood facing them, rifle drawn and aimed at them.</p>
<p>‘Identify yourselves,’ said the soldier.</p>
<p>‘You identify yourself,’ Malcolm replied before Nicola could tell him to shut the fuck up. ‘This is the Prime Minister’s fucking garden. What the fuck do you think you’re doing prowling around in here? You’re not police.’</p>
<p>‘No sir,’ the soldier admitted, ‘but I came here as an escort to Brigadier Peyton and my orders were to watch out for anything suspicious. Two people trying to jump the wall seems to fit that description.’</p>
<p>‘You know where your Brigadier Peyton is now? Dead. Your fucking aliens you’re supposed to be the fucking experts in zapped the fuck out of the whole lot of them. So your fucking orders are probably not that up to date.’</p>
<p>The soldier straightened, frowning. ‘How do I know you’re telling the truth?’</p>
<p>‘Go and look for yourself if you don’t believe me. Briefing room.’</p>
<p>Nicola saw the hesitation in the man’s eyes. He glanced over his shoulder as if debating whether to do as Malcolm said, then tightened his grip on his gun and came a few steps closer.</p>
<p>‘And your name?’ he demanded.</p>
<p>‘Malcolm Tucker, Director of Communications. Who the fuck are you?’</p>
<p>‘Sergeant Martin Walsh,’ said the soldier. He gestured towards Malcolm’s ID badge, which had somehow managed to cling onto the belt of his trousers even through the recent ordeals. Malcolm reached down and unclipped it, then tossed it over to the sergeant, who examined it without lowering his gun, then nodded towards Nicola.</p>
<p>‘And you, Ma’am?’</p>
<p>‘She’s nobody,’ Malcolm said.</p>
<p>‘I asked her,’ replied the soldier. Nicola found herself smiling and was surprised to see the soldier return the gesture, if only briefly and a little sheepishly.</p>
<p>‘Nicola Murray,’ she told him. ‘Secretary of State for Social Affairs and Citizenship.’</p>
<p>‘Why did you climb out the window?’</p>
<p>‘Because the place is swarming with fucking aliens,’ said Malcolm.</p>
<p>‘Look,’ Nicola cut in, risking a step forward, ‘the Doctor sent us. You know about him, right?’</p>
<p>The sergeant nodded. He was about Nicola’s age, she noted, and actually not that bad looking now she was closer. A bit like James had looked when he was younger, before he started going bald, spreading across the middle and acting like a complete twat.</p>
<p>‘I have no fucking clue what’s going on in there,’ she went on, ‘which, before Malcolm says it, isn’t all that different from every other day, admittedly, but I do know this Doctor told us to get out, and he didn’t seem the type to do anything without a pretty good reason.’</p>
<p>‘I met him once in Carbury,’ said Walsh. ‘Funny little guy. But I know what you mean.’ He glanced towards Number Ten, whose windows glowed like slabs of gold against the dark night, so innocent-looking. If Joe Public glanced that way, they’d only think a few MPs were working late. Nothing on the outside of the building, from that angle at least, hinted at the chaos inside.</p>
<p>‘What did he tell you to do?’ Walsh asked.</p>
<p>Nicola opened her mouth to reply, then realised she wasn’t entirely sure, other than running away, what she was supposed to be doing. Looking for some woman in Peckham?</p>
<p>‘We need to get away from here,’ Malcolm said. ‘There’s a woman we need to speak to, and…’</p>
<p>He let out a cry and sank to his knees. Without thinking, Nicola dropped down beside him and caught him just before he sprawled face-down onto the grass. The little patch thing on his neck dropped off like a piece of dead skin and disappeared into the shadows. Whatever it had been doing to keep Malcolm on his feet, it had run out of fuel. The soldier was at their side in a second, and Nicola noticed he’d shouldered his weapon.</p>
<p>‘I think first we need to get him to a hospital,’ she said. ‘But the thing is, we can’t just go back through Number Ten. We don’t know who’s working with these creatures. If they know we were with the Doctor they might try to stop us.’</p>
<p>Walsh considered the problem for a moment then nodded to himself. ‘Then we go over the wall.’</p>
<p>‘Seriously? In this skirt?’</p>
<p>She’d meant it as a joke, sort of, but saw the way he scowled at her and gave him an apologetic look.</p>
<p>‘There’s a seat over by the edge of the lawn,’ he said. ‘Help me get it over here. That’ll help a little.’</p>
<p>Leaving Malcolm propped against the wall, Nicola followed the soldier across the darkened garden to where there was, indeed, a pine park bench, which, thankfully, wasn’t screwed down to the concrete path. She braced herself to pull her shoulders out of joint when she took the weight of it but it was lighter than she expected, no worse than the Ikea table she’d bought for Ellie’s room for her to do her homework on. Thinking of the kids again made her pause. She wanted to take out her phone. There’d be a signal now. She could see if anyone had called. But then she thought of big, green aliens prowling around Downing Street. There was no time. They could be spotted at any moment. All it took was one of the aliens or one of their lackeys to stroll past a window and look out.</p>
<p>Walsh helped her carry the bench back across to the Horseguards wall and they laid it down as close to the stonework as the lawn and border would allow. Walsh tested it a few times to make sure it was steady, then climbed up.</p>
<p>‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I’m going to cut the wire and check if the coast’s clear. If they’re focused on Downing Street, chances are they won’t be looking in this direction, plus the parade ground’s a big area to keep an eye on if their numbers are small.’</p>
<p>‘That’s a lot of ifs there,’ Nicola muttered.</p>
<p>‘Yeah, well, <em>if</em> I’m right, here.’ He pulled open a fabric holster on his belt and drew out an automatic handgun, which he passed down to her. It felt huge and too heavy as Nicola held it, the metal cold and clammy against her skin.</p>
<p>‘I can’t…’ she began.</p>
<p>‘If anything comes near you that looks like it’s going to eat you,’ said Walsh, ‘tell yourself you can.’</p>
<p>With that, he hauled himself up onto the wall and she heard a few snips as he cut through the rows of barbed wire fixed to the top. That might set off an alarm somewhere, Nicola thought, but hopefully by the time anyone got to them, they’d be long gone. A few seconds passed when all she heard was her own pulse beatboxing in her ears, then Walsh dropped down onto the bench again.</p>
<p>‘Couple of cops on the parade ground but once we’re over we can let them know who we are,’ he said. ‘They’re on far side anyway. It’s pretty quiet. Most of them must be either in Number Ten or round about it.’</p>
<p>‘Bet you’re glad about the fucking police cuts now,’ muttered Malcolm.</p>
<p>‘I’ll help you over first,’ Walsh said, laying a hand on Nicola’s shoulder. He looked right into her eyes. He had the most intense eyes she’d ever seen, besides Malcolm’s, and Walsh’s were less ‘I’m going to rip your intestines out and wear them as a scarf’ intense and more just… well, heroic.</p>
<p>She told herself to get a fucking grip and let him help her up onto the bench beside him. He put his hands on her waist and lifted her as she jumped for the top of the wall, and Nicola regretted every extra helping of cake for the last five years. The poor man’s back must be killing him. But she made it. She pulled herself up onto the wall, feeling the straggling ends of the barbed wire clawing at her hair and clothes, but she managed to sit for a moment looking down into Horseguards’ Parade. She’d never seen it at night before. It was just a wide expanse of gravel that looked orange in the sodium lights, with the white, Portland stone buildings that would lead out onto Whitehall off to the right. She saw the two police officers Walsh had mentioned standing by the archway in the middle of the building, chatting casually together, neither of them looking towards Downing Street.</p>
<p>‘Okay,’ Walsh said, bringing her back to the moment, ‘you need to jump down. Then I’ll help your guy over and you’ll need to catch him from the other side, got it?’</p>
<p>‘Jump down six feet and probably break my legs,’ Nicola muttered. ‘Got it.’</p>
<p>‘Try and land on something meaty,’ said Walsh. She heard a smile in his voice. ‘Butt or back. Avoid the bone. And keep everything loose. Don’t tense up your legs or your arms. Less likely to break anything that way.’</p>
<p>‘Less likely,’ she repeated under her breath. ‘Suppose that’ll have to do.’</p>
<p>She looked at the gravel below. It seemed a lot further down than six feet. In three, she told herself, then mentally counted down. When she jumped, she tried to remember everything Walsh said, but the fall was over in seconds and before she knew it, she was on the ground on her backside and aching all over. The noise brought the two coppers racing over and she raised her hands, hoping she didn’t look like a terrorist.</p>
<p>‘I’m an MP,’ she called to them, feeling utterly ridiculous as she did so.</p>
<p>Walsh appeared at the top of the wall just as she was trying to think how to explain what she was doing.</p>
<p>‘I’ve got an injured man here,’ said the soldier. ‘Could use a little help.’</p>
<p>By the time they’d manoeuvred Malcolm down onto the parade ground, there were not only two more police on hand, but a couple of guardsmen in their long red coats and plumed helmets as well, having appeared from the main building at the sound of the commotion. Walsh did all the talking, for which Nicola was eternally grateful, and in the end persuaded the cops to call for an ambulance.</p>
<p>‘Oh,’ Nicola said, as one of the police officer, a young Welshman who looked barely old enough to be out of primary school, cocked his head to one side and relayed instructions into his radio. ‘And I was asked to check on someone, a woman.’ She realised then she’d forgotten the name and the address Rose had given her and, not for the first time that day, she felt like a completely useless cow.</p>
<p>‘Jackie Tyler,’ Malcolm said, though he slurred the words like a drunk, ‘48 Bucknall House, Powell Estate, Peckham.’</p>
<p>‘How the…’ Nicola began, then stopped herself. It wasn’t the time.</p>
<p>‘Powell Estate?’ repeated one of the other officers. ‘I think that’s the woman we had a call from earlier tonight. Couple of units already went round there to see her. Said she had information on these aliens.’</p>
<p>‘Yeah, well her daughter’s shagging one,’ Nicola said under her breath. At least it sounded like the woman was all right, though. If only they could’ve got the news into Number Ten.</p>
<p>The guards let the ambulance into the parade ground through the central archway and its flickering blue lights glanced off the walls and statues all around as if a freak lightning storm had hit. It reminded Nicola of the alien in the Cabinet room and the light that had engulfed it, just after it killed that poor bloke from the MOD. It took her a moment to realise one of the paramedics was speaking to her and another second to figure the girl was waiting for some kind of response.</p>
<p>‘Sorry?’</p>
<p>‘Are you going with him?’ the girl asked.</p>
<p>‘Oh, I… yes, I suppose. Yes. Is that all right?’</p>
<p>The paramedic nodded, then climbed up into the back of her vehicle, where her colleague was hooking Malcolm up to all kinds of medical paraphernalia. Just as she went to get in after them, Nicola felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to find Sergeant Walsh smiling at her, though his eyes still had that serious, cover of a Mills and Boon novel, look about them.</p>
<p>‘Can I give you this?’ he asked, and handed her a piece of paper. Nicola glanced at it and at first just saw a stream of numbers that meant nothing, until it hit her that his accent was American, and so, too, would be his phone number.</p>
<p>‘Just in case, you know, you need anything or anything comes up,’ he went on.</p>
<p>‘Thanks,’ Nicola replied, and found she was blushing like she’d just met Robbie Williams. She knew she should say more, something pithy and memorable, but absolutely nothing would come out of her brain, and with another of those sheepish little grins, Walsh gave her a quick salute and disappeared around the front of the ambulance.</p>
<p>The ambulance driver closed the doors, cutting out all the extraneous noise from outside, leaving only the rustle of the paramedic’s heavy coat as she carried on working at Malcolm’s side. She gestured to a pull-down seat and watched as Nicola strapped herself in, then she thumped on the side of the ambulance to tell the driver to go. The siren started wailing as soon as they had negotiated the narrow passageway from the parade ground to Whitehall, and soon they were headed northwards to Trafalgar Square.</p>
<p>‘We’ll have to take a bit of a long way round,’ said the paramedic, busying herself with some notes on a clipboard. ‘Parliament Square’s still shut off. There’s still chunks of glass and stuff all over the place. Did you see that this morning?’</p>
<p>‘I did, yes,’ Nicola replied with one of her fake smiles she used for members of the public she really didn’t want to talk to.</p>
<p>‘Makes you just… rethink everything, don’t it? I mean, aliens. Wonder if they’re friendly. Like, maybe they’ll give us a cure for cancer or something. The whole world could be different.’</p>
<p>‘I don’t think they’re that sort of aliens,’ Nicola said, ‘although the world may well be very different very soon.’</p>
<p>Something thudded against her arm and for a second she thought she’d dislodged one of the cannisters or packs stuck all over the place inside the ambulance, but then she realised it was just Malcolm using his free hand to thump her on the shoulder.</p>
<p>‘What?’ she asked.</p>
<p>‘I need your phone.’</p>
<p>‘Why?’</p>
<p>‘’Cause I haven’t phoned in my fucking vote for Strictly yet. I need to make a call. Give me the phone.’</p>
<p>‘How can you be half dead and still be such a fucking arsehole, Malcolm?’ Nicola asked, although she fished her phone out of her bag all the same.</p>
<p>‘Skills,’ Malcolm replied. ‘Anyway, I’m not the one running for my life from a fucking alien and still managing to pull one of the military. Dial this number then give me it here.’</p>
<p>With a sigh, Nicola did as she was told and pressed the numbers Malcolm dictated, before handing him the phone as the call started to connect.</p>
<p>‘I did not pull…’ she began, but Malcolm turned away from her.</p>
<p>‘Greig,’ he said, ‘it’s Malcolm Tucker. I’m having to use some woman’s phone. Mine’s is in my pocket and I’m strapped into a fucking ambulance right now. Don’t ask. Listen, I need you do something for me and this is on a code nine, all right? Yeah, I did say that. I know what it fucking means, that’s why I said it. I’m passing you this on direct from him, so you want to argue, take it up with Mr Smug Alien Bastard, that’s if he’s still alive that is. Last I saw him he was stuck in a metal box with a load of big green monsters trying to eat him. He wants a submarine brought into firing range of London, soon as, with live ammo on board. Doesn’t have to be nuclear, in fact he’s said better if it isn’t. Or at least that’s what I think he’s written. Maybe that’s why they call him the Doctor, ‘cause his handwriting’s fucking appalling. Doesn’t matter which one. Just within range, soon as. Can you do that? Excellent. Now, if you excuse me, I’ve had half my fucking arm ripped off by one of those aliens and I think I’m going to have to vomit.’</p>
<p>Nicola managed to grab the phone before Malcolm went through with his threat. She noticed the paramedic’s expression and gave her a sympathetic look.</p>
<p>‘It, eh… it sounds a lot worse than it actually is,’ she said. ‘I’m sure there’ll be a statement in the press tomorrow once everything’s under control. Until then, you realise anything you hear here is covered by the Official Secrets Act, right?’</p>
<p>The paramedic nodded. Thank Christ, Nicola thought, since she had no idea whether what she’d said was actually true.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>8.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>March 10<sup>th</sup> 2006, 10.35am</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Nicola slipped off her trainers and put on her court shoes, which were new and uncomfortable, but her old ones had disappeared during the ongoing clear-up around what was left of Number Ten. Her office door lay ajar and the noise from the open-plan section seeped in, murmurs of voices, swishing of papers, clack of keyboard keys, and the ongoing drone of BBC News 24’s coverage under it all. It all sounded so normal. Even hearing the odd snippet of Harriet Jones giving yet another soundbite to the press had started to feel like part of ordinary life. Four days on and already things were settling back into a pattern.</p>
<p>‘Is she on again?’ she heard Glenn Cullen say, louder than the general background noise so he must’ve just gone past her office door. She glanced up and saw him through the glass partition, heading over to one of the desks where the news played on a monitor. Harriet was, indeed, on again. Nicola drifted out and stood nearby, watching the footage without really hearing what Harriet said. The headline banner at the bottom meanwhile declared ‘Downing Street Terror Attack – Memorial Service Live’. Terror attack, Nicola thought. Was that really the best Malcolm could come up with? Or maybe he was still in hospital and one of his minions had thought of that.</p>
<p>‘You know they’re doing good odds on her for PM,’ Glenn went on.</p>
<p>‘It’ll never happen,’ remarked Terri, bustling past on some errand or other, or perhaps just wandering about with a bit of paper in hand to look busy. ‘I mean, who is she? No one even knows who she is.’</p>
<p>‘She hasn’t had her face off the telly since this started,’ said Glenn. ‘The fucking Amish probably know who she is by now. D’you think Malcolm’s behind this?’</p>
<p>‘I told you it wasn’t real,’ Terri said, planting a copy of the Guardian down on the desk in front of the TV. A blurry photograph of the crashed spaceship in the Thames took up much of the front page, beneath the headline, ‘ALIEN HOAX: POLICE TO INVESTIGATE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT CRASH.’</p>
<p>‘It’s not known at present,’ said Andrew Marr on screen, standing in Whitehall outside the Cabinet Office, ‘whether the two incidents - what’s become known as the ‘London Roswell Incident’ in the Thames, which has been identified by army experts as an experimental aircraft flown illegally into the capital’s airspace by a billionaire tech enthusiast, and the attack on Number Ten which was, unfortunately, all too real – are connected. What is evident, however, is that the shockwaves from Monday’s extraordinary events will be with us for some time yet. Back to you in the studio.’</p>
<p>‘Right,’ Nicola said, ‘it’s twenty-to. We’d better get down there.’</p>
<p>It wouldn’t take twenty minutes to go down four storeys to street level, even avoiding the lifts, but she couldn’t stand watching any more of the reports. Lies were a tool of the trade but for something so big, so monumental to human history, to be fobbed off as a fucking publicity stunt by some Richard Branson wannabe, while the rest was just marked off as down to ‘unknown terrorists’ made her uneasy. She’d been there. She’d seen those fucking green things for herself. But if she tried to tell anyone, they’d think she’d cracked under the pressure. Think she was traumatised after being so close to Downing Street when the ‘bomb’ hit – she wasn’t convinced it was a bomb either, not after that conversation she overheard Malcolm having on the phone in the ambulance. Funny coincidence that this Doctor wants a Royal Navy submarine moved into firing range of London with armed missiles and less than an hour later, Number Ten is blown to pieces.</p>
<p>‘Ollie’s already down there,’ Glenn said, fetching his jacket from the back of his office chair. ‘Did you know he had a cousin working in the press office?’</p>
<p>‘I think he maybe mentioned it,’ Nicola said. She vaguely remembered him saying something about the potential danger of asking Malcolm to let one of his family have a job, but she hadn’t been listening.</p>
<p>‘His name was Seb,’ Terri said. ‘Just in case you have to speak to him and anyone wants to pretend they care.’</p>
<p>Nicola nodded and filed the information away. ‘Right then. Let’s go and stand outside in the cold for two minutes then troop all the way back up again.’</p>
<p>‘I still don’t know why we couldn’t just do it in here,’ she heard Glenn say, but he and the others veered off towards the lifts and the rest of the conversation was cut off. Nicola kept on towards the stairs, taking it slowly so she’d have time to herself to think. Her footsteps echoed in the building’s atrium, despite the anti-noise baffles, and she realised how empty it felt that morning. Everyone was probably out on the street already, she guessed. A cynical voice in her head said they probably thought it was a good excuse to skive off for a few minutes. If they didn’t know anyone who’d died, why would they be sad? Why expect simple human empathy today when it was never in evidence any other day? Maybe it was time to quit this business, she thought. Then again, what would she do? Go back to teaching? No fucking chance, not while the words, ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ still wafted around the corridors of education like Banquo’s fucking ghost. Maybe she should see if UNIT needed anyone, she thought with a smile. She had experience with aliens, even if she couldn’t tell anyone about it without being sectioned. And there was that dishy sergeant…</p>
<p>‘You know, it’s a fucking achievement to be the most depressing thing at a fucking wake for dozens of people, but you’ve managed it.’</p>
<p>She glanced up and saw Malcolm waiting at the foot of the stairs. He had his arm in a sling and a few bruises on the back of his other hand from an IV but other than that, there was nothing in his demeanour to suggest he’d just survived an abortive alien invasion.</p>
<p>‘I’m not in the mood, Malcolm,’ she replied.</p>
<p>‘Seriously,’ he went on, falling into step beside her, ‘nobody expects you to whip out a tambourine and start a round of fucking Kumbaya, but if you get any fucking gloomier, people’ll think you’re one of the corpses they’re supposed to be getting all sad about.’</p>
<p>‘People are dead, Malcolm, lots of people. People we knew.’</p>
<p>‘I know. But there’s a fuckload more people out there watching this on their wee Sky boxes and tellies, and they need to know that the fucking world hasn’t ended. They need to see us sad, yes, but with dignity. Things will go on. Otherwise, what’s the fucking point? Or maybe that’s it. Maybe we should just say, ‘fuck it’, and go home, let someone else sort it out. Oh, except we can’t, because it’s our fucking job. It’s what we signed up for. To show people there’s a reason to keep going.’</p>
<p>‘And to tell people it was all a big hoax?’</p>
<p>Malcolm stopped just shy of the main door and turned to face her. ‘And what’s the alternative? What’s your suggestion? Do you want to go on fucking Breakfast News and tell the whole world that Downing Street was reduced to more powder than fucking Kate Moss puts up her nose in a year because, actually, it wasn’t terrorists, it was massive green aliens who wanted to blow the fucking planet up and sell it off to the highest bidder? Do you want to tell them that, on top of fucking suicide bombers and hijackers and religious fucking nutters and all the rest of it, they’ve now got to go to bed every night pissing themselves over the idea that fucking aliens might be coming for them? That things with technology so advanced it makes CERN look like a fucking Lego set, that we couldn’t begin to defend ourselves against without some other alien coming in to tell us all what to do in the most arse-achingly patronising way possible, might come at us from, oh, actually fucking anywhere in the universe? Do you know what would happen?’</p>
<p>‘Yes, I get it,’ Nicola said wearily. ‘But it just seems…I mean, people saw the spaceship, people saw that pig thing that supposedly was flying it. Hell, people even saw the Slitheen and survived…’</p>
<p>‘All right, all right. 1938, yeah? Orson Welles’s <em>War of the Worlds</em> radio broadcast…’</p>
<p>‘I know. People thought it was real and they panicked.’</p>
<p>‘Exactly. Only, you read about that now in books or whatever and it’ll tell you millions of Americans were running about in the streets shouting ‘the end is fucking nigh’ or whatever, right? Only it wasn’t. Hardly anyone was so stupendously fucking stupid as to think it was real, even in the States. Did you know that?’</p>
<p>Nicola sighed. ‘I did not know that, no, but…’</p>
<p>‘And the reason you did not know that? Because back in 1938, America’s going through the Great Depression. Newspapers are selling about as well as soiled nappies full of used heroin needles. Radio’s taking all the business. So what do they do? They start saying that this radio show created all this panic. They tell people the radio lies, that it can’t be trusted, and they tell this story about these millions of shit-scared Americans running about thinking UFOs are going to come and get them over and over and eventually it becomes the truth. Now you’ll look up some fucking academic textbook on broadcasting history or whatever and it’s there, written up as if it is Gospel fucking truth. Because it’s a better story. It’s more interesting. People want to believe it. And it’s been said enough times by enough people that all your wee media-guzzling member of the public thinks, ‘oh well, they wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true’.’</p>
<p>‘Fine, but…’</p>
<p>‘And the other reason they believe it, and why you still hear that story today even though there are loads of people who know it’s fake, is because it’s easy to believe. We look at how people react to Muslims or fucking refugees or anybody at all that’s even remotely different to what their glossy, celeb-gossip magazine tells them is the fucking norm, and we think, yeah, there’s no way these people could cope with something from space, something fundamentally different to us as a species. Christ, there was a woman last week got harassed in Cardiff by some gammon-faced, Union Jack-waving tosser for speaking a foreign language. She was speaking fucking Welsh! It’s easy to believe there was a panic back in 1938 because you could guarantee there’d be one if it was officially confirmed today that aliens had come to this planet. How many fucking protesters turned up at the barriers before anyone had even said the word ‘spaceship’ on the fucking telly? Seventy-five arrests in the first hour, that’s the figures I got from the Home Office, or what’s fucking left of it.’</p>
<p>‘I know,’ Nicola said. She really didn’t have the energy to argue with him, and it pained her a little to admit that she agreed with him in many respects. He waited for a moment, perhaps sizing her up to see if she was going to cause any trouble, then, evidently satisfied that his pep talk had worked, he headed out through the glass doors onto Whitehall.</p>
<p>‘But,’ Nicola said as she caught up with him outside, ‘we know about it. I mean, how am I supposed to deal with that? Who do you speak to to get counselling for a fucking alien invasion for fuck’s sake?’</p>
<p>‘You don’t,’ Malcolm told her in a low voice. ‘Just the same as you don’t get fucking counselling for dealing with a major cock-up of the immigration database or making an idiot of yourself at a press conference.’</p>
<p>‘This is a little bit different, Malcolm…’</p>
<p>‘How is it? You are a fucking minister of Her Majesty’s Government. You’re a cog in the big fucking machine that keeps the country going. What happened on Monday is just something else we had to deal with and clear away before anyone found out about it, for the good of the fucking country. That’s how you look at it. What happened happened, and what was done was done to achieve the best possible result with next to fuck-all by way of options. You’re always going to do things that feel wrong. You’re always going to have to act against conscience. You’re always going to have to put your own fucking feelings aside in order to do what’s right. And right now, what’s required is that you look like a fucking human being, or as near an approximation as you can get, and stand there for the cameras so that when they go back to studio, some wanker can sit and tell the public that everything will be okay. Because if they say it enough times, there’s a chance people might just believe it.’</p>
<p>Down at the far end of Whitehall, the smaller bells of Westminster, missed by the spacecraft as it hurtled past, started their little Handel melody to mark the hour. All along the street, people stood outside their buildings in little huddles or alone, staring straight ahead. When the chimes stopped, there was a moment’s pause and anticipation, as everyone waited for the toll of the larger bell that would usually follow.</p>
<p>But there was only silence.</p>
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